"Haiga", an archaism, an Americanism or a discredited voice?

Abstract

In view of the contradiction of the prolific use by Spanish speakers of the word "haiga", as an inflection of the verb "haber", and its lack of lexicographic record in the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, this brief research seeks to clarify its status as an archaism, Americanism or discredited voice. To this end, the appearance of this word in the Corpus of the New Historical Dictionary of Spanish was investigated, demonstrating the diffusion of the word from the seventeenth century and especially, but not exclusively, in America; with an increasingly frequent use over time. It is here where the variable of prestige becomes important as a conditioning factor in the recognition of different speeches, especially in a scenario where the acceptance of the polycentrism of the Spanish language contrasts with a prevailing Iberian norm. Finally, a survey is made of various authors and their notions of "archaism" in order to delimit its scope with respect to this word and to establish its relationship with the criterion of prestige, without seeking to arrive at concrete conclusions, but as a starting point for the questioning of linguistic phenomena of a similar nature.