This study clarifies issues related to the transferability of bound morphology and reports onan empirical investigation of morphological transfer in the spatial expressions ofFinnish-speaking (n= 140) and Swedish-speaking (n= 70) adolescentlearners of English. The results indicate that both the bound, agglutinative morphology of the L1Finnish spatial system and the free, prepositional morphology of the L1 Swedish spatial systemconstrain the types of options that learners pursue in their L2 English spatial reference.Additionally, however, the structural and semantic differences between the two L1 systems resultin different patterns of spatial reference in the L2. We characterize these differences in terms ofsemantic transfer and simplification, and go on to show how transfer and simplification interactin our data.