Examining transfer and prototypes in L1 Swedish learners of Spanish : The case of aspect: The simple present and the present progressive

This study is focused on the transfer accounts and the prototype accounts, and examines aspect through looking at L1 Swedish learners of Spanish who are at early stages of acquisition. The prototype accounts postulate that adult learners will acquire the most prototypical forms of a grammatical feature first, and then, as proficiency increases, less prototypical features, called extended meanings, will be acquired incrementally (Shirai & Andersen, 1995, Geeslin & Fafulas, 2012). The transfer accounts claim that all grammatical features of the L1 will transfer at initial stages, and that this will either facilitate or impede acquisition, depending on if there are structures that are realized differently or similarly in the L1 and in the L2 (Kellerman, 1979, Gass & Ard, 1984, Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996, Gabriele et al., 2015). The study uses the stimuli and experiment used in Gabriele et al. (2015), a study that tested L1 English learners of Spanish and found evidence that support the transfer accounts. Results from the present study shows positive evidence of L1 transfer, which is taken as support for the transfer account. The results are not compatible with the prototype accounts. A finding of a marginal difference might be indicative of L2 transfer, which is also taken as evidence for the transfer accounts.