で used with non-action verbs like あります

Question

On another forum I encountered the sentence 私の国では色々な店にあります。I understood it as “In my country [it] is in various stores.” But I am wondering about the use of the particle で. In common grammatical explanations, one of the main uses of で is to mark the location of action, such as 私は学校で勉強します。However, since あります does not seem to be an action verb (or is it?), how is で used in the above sentence?

Answer 1

In your example, あります is primarily connected with 色々な店に. This で is a condition/scope marker rather than a location marker. This type of で describes the "situation" where the following statement holds true. It doesn't have to mark a location, and it doesn't have to be used with an action verb. In your case, it happens to mark a location and happens to modify ある.

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• 全員で考えましょう。
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• 日本では魚がおいしい。