Overshadowing refers to the reduced learning or expression of the association between a weaker cue and an outcome in the presence of another stronger cue. The present study broadens the scope of investigation in second language acquisition (SLA), which has mainly focused on inflectional morphology, by extending it to learning two Chinese syntactic constructions, namely the Ba-construction and its SVO counterpart. Thirty L2 Chinese learners were first exposed to the target constructions via watching videos, and were then tested for comprehension and production. The results were three-fold: first and foremost, they yielded evidence of syntactic overshadowing of the Ba-construction by its SVO counterpart, resulting in the reduction of the quantity and quality of the Ba production; second, since the form–meaning mapping was successful for both the Ba and SVO construction, the syntactic overshadowing is more likely to be an expression deficit; and third, the pre-knowledge of verbs further confined the use of the Ba-construction, suggesting a moderating role of word entrenchment in L2 syntactic learning. These findings not only deepen our understanding of overshadowing at the syntactic level, but also offer a fresh perspective for addressing the challenges of L2 learning of the Chinese Ba-construction.

中文翻译：

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同时学习两种句法结构：一个遮蔽的例子

遮蔽是指在存在另一个更强线索的情况下，较弱线索与结果之间关联的学习或表达减少。本研究拓宽了主要关注屈折形态的第二语言习得（SLA）的研究范围，将其扩展到学习两种汉语句法结构，即 Ba 结构及其 SVO 对应物。30名二语汉语学习者首先通过观看视频接触目标结构，然后进行理解和生产测试。结果是三重的：首先，它们提供了 SVO 对应物在句法上掩盖了 Ba 结构的证据，导致 Ba 产生的数量和质量降低；第二，由于 Ba 和 SVO 结构的形式-意义映射都是成功的，因此句法遮蔽更可能是表达缺陷；第三，动词的预知进一步限制了 Ba 结构的使用，表明词根​​在 L2 句法学习中的调节作用。这些发现不仅加深了我们在句法层面上对遮蔽的理解，而且为应对汉语 Ba 结构的 L2 学习挑战提供了新的视角。