A Deeper Look at the Grammar and Some Implications of SER and ESTAR + Locative in Spanish

Abstract

The article y ESTAR + locativos en espafiol (Hispania, March 1984) presents a semantic and syntactic study of Spanish constructions containing SER and ESTAR with locatives. The principal aim of that article is to explain the difference between constructions such as: ?D6nde es la catedral? and 1'D6nde estd la catedral?, a difference which is clearly sensed by native speakers, even though they might find it impossible to explain the difference. Indeed, even in the theoretical literature, the difference between these two constructions has not received satisfactory explicit formulations. In fact, many textbooks of Spanish and, consequently, many speakers of Spanish as a second language simply ignore the existence of constructions containing SER + locative. Typically, the problem of accounting for such constructions is entirely circumvented by the statement of a blanket rule, according to which locatives require the use of ESTAR, i.e., constructions such as ?D6nde estd la catedral? are the only ones permitted in Spanish. As convenient as it may be, this approach to SER/ESTAR + locatives is an expedient which flies in the face of plain facts of Spanish usage. The fact is that native speakers can be frequently heard to utter sentences such as: