Rural spanish, dialectal variation, tonic possessive, focus, contrast

In northern peninsular Spanish possessive pronouns of single possessor (mi, tu, su) can present stressed variant (mí, tú, sú). This use has not yet been subject of description or study. If in spontaneous speech, preposed possessive sometimes are unstressed and some others are tonics should be a structural, informational, factor behind this use. We wonder, therefore, if it is possible to make use of notions such as focus and contrast to characterize the possessive constituent in this northern Spanish microvariation phenomenon. To do this, we first review the preceding descriptions of their geographical distribution and establish an approach to the notions of topic, focus and contrast. Then, we make a classification and overview of tonic possessive in northern Spanish, thanks to Corpus Oral y Sonoro del Español Rural (COSER) data. We finally establish some considerations on the phenomenon.