An Event-related Potential Study of Second Language Semantic and Syntactic Processing: Evidence From the Declarative/Procedural Model.

Our findings suggest that attained proficiency was a more determinant factor in the L1-like cortical representation of L2 than the age of acquisition and or the type of instruction/context. Several brain areas, similar to those observed for L1, were activated during L2 syntactic processing in high-proficient subjects addressing their reliance on the procedural memory system for syntactic processing to gain more proficiency. For instance, our results showed a significant difference in N400 amplitude for the incorrect regular past conditions in O1 for the PI subjects, which shows the initial reliance on the declarative memory system for syntactic processing at lower levels of L2.