«A praia está perto»: Zum Gebrauch des Verbsestarin Ausdrücken der statischen Lage im Portugiesischen

Abstract

AbstractThe article examines the use ofestarin Portuguese expressions of permanent location, which runs counter to normative grammar, according to whichserandficarshould appear in those cases. This use ofestaris not mentioned in grammatical descriptions, either. Yet, it occurs in contemporary Portuguese (both Portugal and Brazil). The same goes for the Portuguese- and Spanish-lexified creoles, some of which usetá/stá(< estar),to express location. However, almost all rely on a single verb in these contexts. The research question was studied empirically in a corpus (N=1,037) based on Google searches with seven exact phrases includingestar,ser, andficar, subsequently complemented with an analysis of two other Portuguese corpora. The results show thatestarappears in expressions of permanent location, both in Portugal (22,5%) and Brazil (17,5%). However, there is a statistically significant difference,ficarbeing more frequent in Brazil andserin Portugal. Moreover, the higher frequency ofestarin Portugal may indirectly explain the popularity officarin Brazil. In addition,estarappears in written nonfiction, pointing to expressions of the typeestar localizado/situadoas its possible origin, also taking into account that no instances of its use were found in older documents.