1. Introduction

This article introduces the background of foreign language learners in Chinese universities learning other languages besides English, and points out the lack of empirical research on the transfer effects of native Chinese and second language English in third language acquisition. This study focuses on the transfer effects of L1 and L2 grammatical usage patterns on L3 Spanish language acquisition, exploring the sources of transfer from the perspectives of grammatical form and semantic concepts. The research subjects are Spanish major students from a certain university in China. By analyzing guided writing corpus, this study reveals the transfer effects and underlying reasons of L1 and L2 grammar usage in L3 Spanish writing. Emphasis was placed on the subjectivity of grammatical forms, as well as the similarities and differences in grammatical forms and semantics among Chinese, English, and Western languages.

2. Literature review

In depth exploration of the concept of "ti" in Chinese, English, and Western languages, as well as its expression at the grammatical and lexical levels. The article first introduces the definition of "aspect", which refers to the different ways of observing the temporal components within the verb context, including the perfect and incomplete aspects. Next, a detailed analysis was conducted on the expression mechanisms of Spanish, English, and Chinese at the grammatical level, such as PIN and PIM in Spanish, verb inflectional forms or phrases in English, and body markers in Chinese. In addition, the differences in the use of state verbs and achievement verbs in the three languages were discussed, such as the zero mark form of Chinese state verbs, the absence of English state verbs in the incomplete form, and the PIN and PIM forms of Spanish verbs.

3. Research methods

The research subjects were 18 Spanish major students and 6 native speakers, divided into three groups based on CEFR: intermediate, intermediate advanced, and advanced. Using narrative writing tasks, participants are required to convert 40 prototype verbs into appropriate tense tense forms based on the outline. After extracting the corpus, mark the past tense perfect and incomplete forms as PIN and PIM respectively, and mark other forms or non output as invalid items. Evaluate the usage trend of syntactic forms through calculation formulas, and reflect the proportion of PIN or PIM usage with numerical values close to 0 or 1.

4. Data analysis and result discussion

Through data analysis and result discussion, this study delves into the transfer phenomenon of native and second language grammar usage patterns in trilingual writing. Research has found that there is a clear trend in the use of verb grammatical forms among participants at different levels, with state verbs tending to use the incomplete form and achievement verbs being more commonly used in the complete form. With the improvement of trilingual proficiency, the use of incomplete forms gradually increases, especially for activity and implementation verbs, where participants are able to match form and semantics based on contextual information.

5. Conclusion

This study reveals the transfer effect of L1 and L2 on L3 acquisition, indicating that when the grammatical form and semantics of the three languages are consistent, learners can achieve positive transfer and produce no significant difference from native speakers; However, formal or semantic differences lead to negative transfer, with formal differences mainly coming from L2 and semantic differences coming from L1. The lack of semantic and linguistic concepts poses greater challenges for learners and has not yet been overcome among high-level learners. The study failed to comprehensively explore the similarities and differences between all languages. It is recommended that future research expand to different languages and grammar points to improve the transfer model in L3 acquisition.