Research on the acquisition of Spanish's two copulas, "ser" and "estar," provides an understanding of the interaction among syntax, semantics, pragmatics, morphology, and vocabulary during development (e.g., Geeslin, 2003a, 2003b; Gunterman, 1992; Ryan & Lafford, 1992). Recent research suggests that linguistic features in the surrounding discourse influence learners' copula choice. We present a corpus-based analysis of the lexico-grammatical features co-occurring with copula + adjective usage among foreign-language learners of Spanish at three levels of instruction. Findings revealed the following: (a) both "ser" + adjective and "estar" + adjective occur at all levels where little linguistic complexity typically occurs; (b) "ser" + adjective appears in descriptive and evaluative discourse; and (c) "estar" + adjective is present in narrations, descriptions, and hypothetical discourse.