'Omen'ek esan nahi omen duenaz

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to shed so me light on the meaning and use of the Basque reportative particle lomenl. We want to show thatl contrary to what most Basque dictionaries and grammars suggestl beyond its reportative aspectl the meaning of lomenl does not include neither (i) the evidential meaning that would make it synonymous with the particle Ibidel nor (ii) the express ion of doubt or uncertainty about the truth of the proposition on which lomenl operates. We will also try to account for the particular behavior of lomenl as a reportative particle. * To deal with these issuesl we will make use of basic tenets of contemporary semantics and pragmaticsl distinguishing among the meaning of sentences containing 'omenll the contentes) of utterances of those sentencesl and the eventual conversational implicatures generated by those utterances. We will also bríefly compare our view with Fallerls (2002) speech-act theoretic account of a similar partie/e in Cuzco Quechua.