Complex transfer processes in multilingual language (L3/Ln) acquisition of Spanish past tenses: the role of non-native language (L2) transfer

Research has shown that non-native background languages (L2s) can play an important role in the acquisition of an L3/L-n. However, only a few studies have focussed on positive transfer from an L2 to an L3/Ln in the context of multilingual language acquisition of Romance past tenses. The present study therefore analyses the acquisition of perfective/imperfective aspect in Spanish by 58 German-speaking multilingual learners with previous linguistic knowledge in two L2s (i.e. English and French). Data were elicited by means of a language background questionnaire, a c-test (for proficiency measures in Spanish), and three semantic interpretation tasks (used to determine the participants' knowledge of aspect in the L2s and the target language). The findings indicate that the learners transfer the form-meaning-mappings established in (one of) their L2s, resulting in positive effects when form-meaning-mappings between the L2 and the target language(s) are similar.