[Verse 1] Your brain was built for mother tongue delight Now second language rewrites the fight Four changes dominate this neural shift From procedural habits to memory's drift The grammar system loses its plasticity Declarative memory fills the cavity Hippocampus stores rules like memorized facts While native speakers flow through unconscious acts [Chorus] Declarative compensates when procedure fails Entrenchment fights with competitive tales Statistics yield less from the same bright stream Executive load burdens the bilingual dream Four pillars holding up the L2 machine Different constraints but same brain routine [Verse 2] Your phoneme fortress stands consolidated strong L1 categories warp perception's song Native language magnet from infancy's start Now becomes the obstacle tearing apart Each foreign sound that tries to penetrate The crystallized cortex seals accent's fate Why pronunciation stays the hardest skill When neural pathways refuse to rebuild [Chorus] Declarative compensates when procedure fails Entrenchment fights with competitive tales Statistics yield less from the same bright stream Executive load burdens the bilingual dream Four pillars holding up the L2 machine Different constraints but same brain routine [Bridge] Cortical tuning that made babies learn so fast Now grown rigid, flexibility's passed Distributional patterns slip through weakened nets While prefrontal cortex places heavy bets Controlling interference every single time L1 stays active in the neural chime [Verse 3] But vocabulary keeps its ancient way Phonological working memory's display Hippocampus binds the sound to meaning still Memory capacity predicts the skill Immersion beats the classroom's rule parade When procedural patterns finally get made High proficiency shifts the processing back To native-like flows on the neural track [Verse 4] The later you arrive, the steeper the climb Critical periods marking language time Basal ganglia circuits won't easily bend Declarative shortcuts must compensate and mend Age of acquisition leaves its neural scar On every morpheme learned from afar Yet some exceptional learners break the mold Through intensive practice, stories untold [Chorus] Declarative compensates when procedure fails Entrenchment fights with competitive tales Statistics yield less from the same bright stream Executive load burdens the bilingual dream Four pillars holding up the L2 machine Different constraints but same brain routine [Outro] Same architecture, different game Ullman's theory stakes the claim Adult learning finds another road Through the linguistic neural code
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