This study investigates the acquisition of the three English spatial prepositions: ‘in’, ‘on’, and ‘at’ by 100 Saudi EFL students within the framework of the Markedness Theory. From the markedness point of view, marked/infrequent structures are more difficult in acquisition compared to their corresponding unmarked/frequent structures. English and Arabic differ in the way they express the semantic relations of these prepositions. This is assumed to pose difficulties in learning for EFL students where learners compare the English prepositional system to that of Arabic and resort to literal translation; thus, L1 transfer takes place. The study aims to provide insight into the challenges that Arab EFL learners encounter when learning English and to fill a gap in the literature of second language acquisition regarding the acquisition of prepositions by Arab EFL learners when semantic asymmetries are attested. Results show that the unmarked preposition ‘in’ is learned easily because its Arabic equivalent ‘fi’ covers more functions in the native language. As for the prepositions ‘on’ and ‘at’, results show that participants are struggling to learn them because only a few meanings correspond between ‘on’ and its Arabic equivalent ‘ʕala’, and that Arabic lacks an equivalent for ‘at’.

本研究调查了100 名沙特 EFL 学生在标记理论框架内对三个英语空间介词“ in”、“on”和“ at”的习得情况。从标记性的角度来看，与相应的未标记/频繁结构相比，标记/不常见结构更难获取。英语和阿拉伯语在表达这些介词语义关系的方式上有所不同。这被认为会给 EFL 学生的学习带来困难，因为学习者将英语介词系统与阿拉伯语介词系统进行比较并诉诸直译；因此，L1 传输发生。该研究旨在深入了解阿拉伯英语学习者在学习英语时遇到的挑战，并填补第二语言习得文献中关于阿拉伯英语学习者在语义不对称得到证实时习得介词的空白。结果表明，无标记介词“in”很容易学习，因为它的阿拉伯语对应词“ fi”涵盖更多母语功能。至于介词“ on”和“ at”，结果表明参与者学习起来很困难，因为“ on”和其阿拉伯语对应词“ ʕala”之间只有少数含义相对应，而阿拉伯语缺乏“ at”的对应词。