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This article analyses, from a functional perspective, the Spanish sentences characterized by the presence of the syntactic sequence 'Estar de + N'. This pattern appears in at least two different grammatical constructions. In one of them, the noun head of the prepositional phrase designates entities of the first order (concrete entities or objects: N1); in the other, the noun head designates entities of the second order (events: n2). I will put forward arguments to support the idea that both categories originally come from copulative predications expressing locative content. For this reason the notion of location is still very important in the functioning and the correct interpretation of such constructions. On the other hand, the notion of 'provisional state', which has frequently been considered as an essential element of these constructions, is understood here as a pragmatic and not a semantic feature. From this point of view, it would be a generalized implicature that arises as a specification of sense derived from the idea of location. Finally, I will try to demonstrate how the functional characterization of the structure 'Estar de + N' fits in exactly with certain predictions of the linguistic typology with regard to the evolutionary process by which the verb estar has progressively broadened its copulative uses.
