Variants with Relative Adverbs of Place in the Corpes XXI

We present a study of the oral and written corpus with regard to the current status of
constructions of the type delante de mí, delante mío, and delante mía in the Spanish-speaking world.
We consider four variables: adverb (taking into account not only canonical forms, such as delante, but
also forms discredited by language authorities, such as adelante); person; nature of the discourse
(oral/written); and dialectal area. The results show that (1) the variant using the possessive is very
infrequent, particularly in the case of the feminine possessive (delante mía); (2) stigmatized adverbs are
significantly more prone to use the unrecommended structure; (3) oral discourse tends especially
towards the less academic usage (the variant with the possessive form, ending in -a); (4) the dialectal
areas most prone to using the possessive form are Río de la Plata and Chile. However, in the West
Indies, Spain, and Mexico and Central America the preposition plus personal pronoun form is used
almost systematically.