Ana Clara Polakof

The goal of this paper is to explore the use of slurs in Rioplatense Spanish (RpS, variety spoken around the Rio de la Plata Basin of Uruguay and Argentina). Specifically, we will analyze gender and sexual identity related slurs—which involve the way in which we identify ourselves with relation to gender and sex, as well as how we are identified by others—, given that our first approach to the corpus showed that they are more frequent than racial slurs in RpS, and that they are easily interpreted as such. While a rioplatense speaker could argue that negro (black) is not a slur, she certainly would argue that tortillera (dyke) is one. In order to analyze their use, we will first conduct a pilot which tests the offensiveness of slurs and swearwords, such as estúpido (stupid), and imbécil (imbecile). Second, we will conduct a RpS corpus analysis (at https://www.corpusdelespanol.org/web-dial/). And, third, we will set up an experiment (an off-line test with a multiple choice questionnaire). Overall, we will defend that the use of linguistic methods can help us to test the hypothesis that both slurs and swearwords have descriptive and expressive components.

Vendler discusses how we may linguistically recognize a singular term. Even though singular terms are relevant to Philosophy and not necessarily to Linguistics, it may be enriching to know what we can do to disambiguate such a term. Philosophically, singular terms are seen as singular definite descriptions which may be used to refer to a unique entity in the world. Vendler tried to provide a syntactic account of singular terms, and was not taken into account by philosophers. Linguistically speaking, a singular term will be a singular definite determiner phrase which may or may not correlate to something. We will show that a strictly syntactic account, as the one Vendler proposed, is deficient, and that it does not provide necessary and sufficient conditions to recognize a singular term. We will take into account Vendler’s spirit. We will use the advances in linguistics to explain how we may form a singular term, and provide syntactic-semantic conditions to recognize a singular term.

We argue that it is possible to differentiate facts from states of affairs ontologically. We defend a Platonist ontology, based on Chateaubriand, that is hierarchized in levels and types. It contains concrete objects as the most basic entities, logical and non-logical properties, facts, states of affairs, among other entities. While some current philosophers do not distinguish facts from states of affairs, we argue that this is not how they should be treated. We consider that, even though they are both instantiated entities, they have different features. We are convinced that, in a hierarchized ontology, facts and states of affairs should occupy different levels, have different types, as well as different characteristics. In this article, we will show what is the distinction we propose, as well as we what are the advantages that our distinction possess.

En esta nota, defenderemos que los nombres abstractos denotan lo abstracto si se encuentran en un sintagma determinante subespecificado. Argumentaremos que la ausencia de la frase clasificadora será la responsable de que denoten lo abstracto. Por lo tanto, será la estructura y no el nombre abstracto en sí mismo la que nos permitirá denotar lo abstracto. Argumentaremos, asimismo, que la ausencia de dicha frase se relaciona con el conocimiento del mundo. Como no podemos percibir lo abstracto, no podemos porcionarlo. Así, no tenemos una frase clasificadora y la estructura del sintagma determinante refleja, en cierto sentido, el conocimiento del mundo.

This paper makes a Fregean analysis of certain expressions which, according to the way they are constructed, can refer, firstly, to events and, secondly, to the results of these events. This paper intends to show that –if we take into account the above mentioned expressions and use Fregean notions such as meaning, reference, function, argument and concept– it is possible to consider events as objects. To do this we need to articulate developments made both from a linguistic perspective and a philosophical one. In this particular case, we take into account the Fregean ontology; we try to analyze ontologically the linguistic phenomena called nominalization and arrive to interesting conclusions about the ontological and semantic behavior of the expressions that contain event and result nominalizations.

This article claims that events, facts and states of affairs need to be differentiated. It takes as a starting point Chisholm’s claim that only his ontology of states of affairs explains effectively thirteen sentences related to propositions and events. He does this by reducing propositions and events to states of affairs. We argue that our ontology also solves those problems. We defend a hierarchized Platonist ontology that has concrete entities and abstract entities. The distinctions we propose allow us to explain the pre-analytic data analyzed by Chisholm without reducing entities. We claim that our ontology provides a different way of explaining that data, and is, thus, promissory.

En este artículo, proponemos que es posible analizar la referencia a hechos y eventos a partir de un análisis lingüístico. Para esto, proveemos, en primer lugar, una caracterización ontológica de hechos y eventos basada en una ontología platonista, que contiene entidades concretas y abstractas y se encuentra jerarquizada en niveles, y en segundo lugar, un análisis de la referencia a hechos y eventos que parte de un análisis gramatical de las descripciones definidas que pueden ser relacionadas a dichas entidades. Finalmente, determinamos si es posible referir a los hechos y a los eventos o no.