Particle で mystery

Japanese
#1

So I’ve run across this sentence recently:

次の駅で事故がありました。

I’ve checked with google translate and it gives exactly the same result for the sentence:

There was an accident at the next station.

What I am puzzling about right now is why is it OK to use particle で here when the main verb is あります…
The all explanations I could find always say that you should never combine particle で and the verb あります …

My two theories right now are:

  1. で is used here as a topic marker.
  2. 事故があります is somehow considered as a phrase describing an action and thus indicating location with で …

Has anybody please got any inside into this matter?
And if possible maybe a link to some explanation of this type of grammar?

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

どうもありがとうございます。

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#2

Hello and welcome to the forums!

で can be used with ある. It is used to mark the location where some action takes place, as you’d probably expect. Normally, with ある, this ‘action’ is something like an event of some sort. When に is used with a location and ある, it will be marking the location where something exists.

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#3

Thank you for the prompt response. Strangly I don’t see this topic explained properly anywhere.

So:

thing + ある … location に

action + ある … location で

I am sure there will be some confusing cases, when it is not easy to decide what is ‘event’ and what is ‘thing’.

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#4

I’m not exactly sure what has you confused, so I will just break down the sentence.

次の (next) 駅 (station) で (at) 事故 (accident) がありました (there was).

Instead of trying to break it down using grammatical formulas, just understand that で is simply marking that an action occurred at the station.

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#5

The all explanations I could find always say that you should never combine particle で and the verb あります …

Kinda baffled, where’d you read this? Never heard of this rule before.

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#6

I haven’t specifically read about it either, but such a rule does make sense when がある is referring to the location/existence of something, like 旧名CursedKitsune said.
E.g. something like 「本はどこですか？」「テーブルの上にあります」would always use に and never で right.

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#7

This is honestly a fun question. Usually the rule is:

  • use に with verbs expressing some continuous state that persists over time (住む、ある、いる etc)
  • use で with verbs that express an action (食べる、走る、買う、書く、する)

But verbs can shapeshift. As everyone mentioned above, in the example of 「この場所で事故があった」, the ある may really be functioning more like 起きる (occur). 「この場所で事故が起きた」, because the nuance is that some action took place and then ended.

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