0

The contribution of evidentials to utterance content: Evidence from the Basque reportative
particle omen

Kepa Korta and Larraitz Zubeldia

Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information (ILCLI)
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Carlos Santamaria Zentroa
Elhuyar plaza 2
E-20018 Donostia

kepa.korta@ehu.es
larraitzza@gmail.com
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The contribution of evidentials to utterance content: Evidence from the Basque reportative
particle omen
 2

Abstract

The aim of the present work is to provide evidence for two debates in the formal literature on
evidentiality: (i) whether the evidential content of evidential elements is in the scope of (certain)
operators and (ii) whether the evidential content can be directly assented/rejected or challenged.
We argue, based on the main semantic and pragmatic properties of the Basque reportative particle
omen that, on the one hand, the evidential content can have narrow scope within certain
operators, and, on the other hand, it can be rejected (contrary to what is claimed to happen cross-
linguistically). Based on these facts, we contend that the role of omen is best interpreted as
contributing to the truth-conditions or the propositional content of the utterance, and not to its
illocutionary force or as a presupposition trigger. We contend that, by using omen, the speaker
asserts that the reported proposition has been stated (or written) by someone other than herself.
Omen has no other semantic meaning. In our view, the speaker’s expression of uncertainty often
attributed to omen, if it is present, belongs to the pragmatic content of the utterance, and, more
precisely, is a generalized conversational implicature of the omen-utterance. Grice’s (1967a/1989,
1967b/1989) cancellability ‘test’ and the data from several corpora support our conclusion. The
speaker’s expression of uncertainty is explicitly or contextually cancellable, and we found many
examples in which the speaker’s certainty on either the truth or falsity of the reported proposition
is clear. Besides that, inspired by Korta & Perry 2011a, we distinguish between three contents, or
sets of truth-conditions, involved in an omen-utterance, relative to the possible status of the
original speaker. Moreover, the results of another test (which can be called the reportability test)
show that speakers tend not to use omen to report non-literal contents (particularized
conversational implicatures and presuppositions, at least).*
*
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Societas
Linguistica Europaea, in Vilnius, the ILCLI Seminar on Language and Communication, the
pragmatics reading group of the Linguistics department at UCL, the conference The nature of
evidentiality, in Leiden, and the 2nd IIFs-ILCLI Workshop on Logic, Cognition and Language,
Mexico City. We would like to thank Kasper Boye, Richard Breheny, Martine Bruil, Eros
Corazza, Bert Cornillie, Carmén Curcó, Ricardo Etxepare, Martina Faller, Thiago Galery, Ekain
Garmendia, Joana Garmendia, Lorena Gil de Montes, Bittor Hidalgo, Mikhail Kissine, Jesus M.
 3

Keywords: Basque, particle, reportative, evidentiality, uncertainty, generalized conversational

implicature, cancellability, propositional content

Larrazabal, Tyler Peterson, María Ponte, Nausicaa Pouscoulous, Mathias Schenner, Nicola
Spotorno, Kate Scott, Ye Tian, Jyrki Tuomainen, and Björn Wiemer for their comments and
suggestions. Special thanks are due to Robyn Carston, for her helpful comments discussing some
issues on this paper. The responsibility of any remaining mistakes is ours, of course. This work
was partially supported by grants of the Basque Government (IT323-10 and IT780-13)) and the
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2009-08574 and FFI2012-37726). The second
author is a researcher in the postdoctoral program of the Department of Education, Universities
and Research of the Basque Government.
 4

0. INTRODUCTION. In this paper we focus on two main issues discussed in the literature on
evidentiality. First, we will address the scope of the evidential content with respect to operators
such as negation, the antecedent of the conditional, predicates of saying, etc. Second, we will
consider whether the evidential contribution can be directly assented, rejected or challenged.
Concerning the first issue, evidential elements are divided cross-linguistically between those that
are in the scope of an operator and those which are not. The former are analyzed as contributing
to the propositional content or the truth-conditions of the utterance (see, among others,
Matthewson et al. 2007, Matthewson 2013, McCready & Ogata 2007, and Schenner 2008a),
while the latter are analyzed as illocutionary force indicators (see, for example, Faller 2002 and
Murray 2010). We will see that the Basque reportative particle omen can take narrow scope
within certain operators.

As far as the second issue is concerned, the debate lies on what is being targeted when an
utterance containing an evidential is being challenged by uttering, for example, ‘that’s not true’:
the reported content p or the evidential contribution or content itself (namely, that p was said by
someone other than the speaker). If the former, it will be a signal that the evidential content is not
part of the truth-conditional content, whereas if the latter, it will be a signal that it is. Most
evidentials are cross-linguistically reported to be directly unchallengeable or unrejectable (see,
for example, Faller 2002 and Murray 2010). However, there are evidentials whose evidential
content can be challenged or rejected (Faller 2002, Matthewson et al. 2007, Matthewson 2013),
and that is the case with the Basque omen as well.

In this work, we provide evidence on these two issues based on the main semantic and
pragmatic properties of the Basque reportative particle omen. We think omen is worth studying
mainly for two reasons. First of all, it is interesting because it contributes to the works on
evidentiality, where it is often emphasized that data and analysis of more languages is needed to
draw a more general picture of this category (see Aikhenvald 2004:23, Faller 2006:17-18,
McCready & Ogata 2007:198, and Matthewson 2013:2-3, among others). In addition, it
challenges the proposals made so far in the literature on evidentiality (see, among others, Faller
 5

2002, Matthewson et al. 2007, and Murray 2010); its semantic and pragmatic properties ask for a
different analysis.

The second reason to analyze omen is that it is interesting from the point of view of
Basque linguistics. The Basque particles such as omen (reportative, ‘it is said’), ei (reportative, ‘it
is said’, Bizkaian dialectal counterpart of omen), ote (used in questions, ‘maybe’), al (question
particle used in polar questions)1 or bide (inferential, ‘apparently’, ‘probably’) have always been
considered as something unique, even strange, perhaps because the neighboring languages
(Spanish and French) do not have an equivalent. Such elements have long been mentioned by
lexicographers and grammarians who have studied the Basque language (see, among others,
Mujika 1988, Zubiri & Zubiri 1995, Ortiz de Urbina 2003, and de Rijk 2008). But it seems that
the authors who take as reference Spanish and French (or English) do not manage to describe or
translate such elements easily. And it looks, sometimes, as if the fact of taking those languages as
a basis has led them to a wrong approach or to move away somewhat from the original meaning.

To date, very little research work has been carried out on the use and meaning of the
Basque particles (see King 1993, Jendraschek 2003, Alcázar 2010, and Etxepare 2010, for recent
works). So, it is quite understandable that there are many issues to investigate concerning their
meaning and use. Yet it is not difficult to find a reason why so little study has been carried out.
For a start, little research work has been carried out on Basque from the point of view of
semantics and pragmatics, and particles are no exception to other linguistic elements. It is syntax
which has enjoyed a privileged place in Basque linguistics, whereas semantics and pragmatics
have only occasionally been touched on (see, for example, Gómez Txurruka 1996, Aurnague
1999, Osa 1990, and Korta 2001). This work is, indeed, an attempt to fill up that lacuna.

In this work, we centre our attention on two main issues about evidentiality by analyzing
the use and meaning of omen, based on both semantic and pragmatic theories and concepts,2 and
taking the following sort of questions as our starting-point: When is omen used? What is it used
for? What does the speaker3 express when she uses omen?
 6

We will first introduce our general semantic and pragmatic framework, trying to clarify
the basic theoretical tools to be used in this paper, as well as its basic terminology (section 1).
After that, we will introduce the main morphosyntactic features of omen (section 2). We will sum
up, then, what has been said up to now about omen in linguistic literature, grammars and
dictionaries of Basque language (what we take to be the standard view on omen) (section 3).
Later, we will present and discuss the two main issues debated in the literature on evidentiality;
we will argue that omen is best analyzed as contributing to the propositional content of the
utterance, and not to its illocutionary force nor as generating a presupposition (section 4). And,
after that, we will see what omen’s contribution to the utterance content is: we will, first, show
that the expression of uncertainty often associated with omen is not part of the meaning of omen-
sentences, but a generalized conversational implicature (GCI from now on) of omen-utterances
(subsection 5.1), and we will give, then, the meaning of omen-sentences (subsection 5.2) and the
contents of omen-utterances (subsection 5.3), according to our proposal. We will finish by
summarizing the major conclusions in section 6.

1. THE GENERAL FRAMEWORK. Our general view on semantics and pragmatics is significantly
influenced by the account called CRITICAL PRAGMATICS (Korta & Perry 2011a), which we adapt
to our present purposes. We are introducing it somewhat dogmatically, since the discussion of the
proper pragmatic framework and its relation to semantics exceeds the limits of this paper.
Anyhow, its application to our case in hand would constitute indirect support for this framework.

1.1. UTTERANCES AND CONTENTS. One of the main contributions of the pragmatic study of
language done following the works of Austin (1962) and Grice (1967a/1989, 1967b/1989) can be
taken to be the distinction between sentences and utterances, and their respective meanings and
contents or truth-conditions. In a nutshell, sentences (roughly, well-formed complex expressions,
built out from basic expressions of a particular language, according to its grammatical rules) do
have meanings. But they do not have contents; they do not have truth-conditions; they do not
express propositions; they say nothing. Utterances do. Or, better said, speakers do. Typically, a
speaker uttering a sentence says something; something that (in the paradigmatic case of uttering a
 7

declarative sentence) has widely been called, in the philosophical literature, the TRUTH-
CONDITIONS or the CONTENT of the utterance, or the PROPOSITION EXPRESSED or WHAT IS SAID by
the speaker. Take, for instance, the following sentence.

(1) a. I am a philosopher.

Everybody with sufficient knowledge of English understands what the meaning of 1a is; just
knowing the meanings of its individual words and their rules of composition will do. This is
something that all utterances of that sentence share: the sentence’s meaning. But this is quite
different from knowing what a speaker said in uttering it; that is, from the utterance’s truth-
conditions or its content. To begin with, there will be a different content, a different proposition
expressed for each speaker. Suppose Kepa uttered

(1) b. I am a philosopher.

This utterance will be true if and only if Kepa is a philosopher.4 Assuming a referentialist view
on indexicals (Kaplan 1989, Perry 2012), this involves Kepa himself, and the property of being a
philosopher, which could be represented as the following proposition.

(2) KEPA IS A PHILOSOPHER.5

Now, if Larraitz uttered

(1) c. I am a philosopher,

she would have been saying something different; the truth-conditions of her utterance would
involve herself; the proposition expressed would have been

(3) LARRAITZ IS A PHILOSOPHER.

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2 and 3 are different propositions; 2 is true, as Kepa is a philosopher, and 3 is false, as Larraitz is
not.

From now on, then, we will use MEANING as restricted to sentences or words, and reserve
what is said, content, truth-conditions, and proposition expressed for utterances.6 Most often,
these have been used as synonyms. But there are good reasons not to do it (see Korta & Perry
2007a, 2011a, 2013).

1.2. THE CONTENTS OF THE UTTERANCE. Given that we will be mostly concerned with statements,
that is, utterances of declarative (as opposed to interrogative and imperative) sentences, we will
favor the phrases what is stated rather than what is said. What is stated can be characterized by a
proposition, that is, a set of truth-conditions. In that sense, 2 and 3 above represent, respectively,
what is stated by Kepa’s and Larraitz’s utterances. So far, so good. They give us a content of each
utterance. But, according to Korta and Perry (2011a), those utterances have more contents, more
sets of truth-conditions, depending on the parameters taken as given. For our purposes, we will
distinguish three different kinds: (i) reflexive or utterance-bound; (ii) explicit referential; and (iii)
enriched referential.

Suppose you heard Kepa’s utterance 1b, but you were not in a position to determine who
uttered it. Without that information, you would not wholly understand the statement; given that
you heard the utterance and know English, you would have access to the following content.

(4) THE SPEAKER OF 1b IS A PHILOSOPHER.

Granted. This is not what Kepa stated. He does not state, and he did not intend to state, anything
about the speaker of his utterance, but something about himself. However, this is still a content, it
is a set of conditions that his utterance imposes on the world for the utterance to be true, a content
of the utterance that is available to any hearer of that utterance. It is UTTERANCE-BOUND or
REFLEXIVE content, in the sense that it contains the utterance itself.7 It is the token-reflexive type
of content that all utterances of sentence 1 share.8
 9

Now, to get at what Kepa stated, you have to fix the referent of the indexical I, and get at
the referential content of the utterance, that is,

(5) KEPA IS A PHILOSOPHER,

the proposition that is obtained given the utterance, the meaning of the sentence used plus the fact
that Kepa is the speaker, that is, the referent of the pronoun I. In general, the referential content is
determined by fixing the values for all context-sensitive expressions contained in the sentence
uttered. We will add the adjective EXPLICIT to distinguish this kind of content from cases in
which there are further elements that arguably belong to what is stated. These elements are
usually called UNARTICULATED CONSTITUENTS (see e.g. Perry 1986, 1998), and can be taken to be
the product of a pragmatic process of enrichment (see, among others, Sperber & Wilson
1986/1995, Carston 2002).

Suppose Larraitz and Kepa planned to go sailing, if the weather conditions were
favorable. Kepa gets up early, checks the forecast on the Internet, looks through the window, and
phones Larraitz to tell her.

(6) It’s raining.

Arguably, the sentence uttered does not contain any element that stands for the location of the
raining event, but the statement does. Kepa’s statement is about Donostia, and it is true if and
only if it is raining in Donostia (at the time of the utterance). The enriched referential content of
the statement would, then, be the following.

(7) IT IS RAINING IN DONOSTIA AT TIME T.

So, some utterances will have contents that go beyond the explicit referential content,
because they contain elements not articulated by any element in the sentence, elements which are
 10

implicit in the content and are the product of enrichment. We will call this kind of content the
ENRICHED REFERENTIAL CONTENT.

In the last decades, there has been an intense debate (see, for example, Carston 1998,
2002; Stanley 2000; Bach 2001; Recanati 2004; Cappelen & Lepore 2005, and Korta & Perry
2007b) about the appropriate kind of content to be properly considered as what is said or the
proposition expressed by the utterance. In our view, both the explicit referential content and
enriched referential content are good candidates. The latter is not always present (not all
statements have unarticulated constituents), so, in these cases, the explicit one will count as what
is said (or stated). In cases in which both are available, we are inclined to favor the enriched
referential content. What we want to emphasize is that in accepting a variety of contents for an
utterance, we do not claim that utterances are multiply ambiguous, or that the speaker states a
variety of things (i.e., that she expresses a variety of propositions). Just one of those contents will
count as what is said, but the other contents have theoretically useful work to do (Korta & Perry
2011a). Things are a bit more complicated. But for our present purposes, this will do.

1.3. CONTENTS AND IMPLICATURES. Among the contents of the utterance, we should make a
further distinction between the contents we distinguished above, which can all be taken to belong
to the category of LITERAL CONTENT, and the IMPLICATURES of the utterance, in the Gricean
sense. Implicatures are also contents of the utterance but they belong to what is typically taken as
its NON-LITERAL CONTENT. Grice (1967a/1989, 1967b/1989) distinguishes conventional and
conversational implicatures. Conventional implicatures are triggered by the conventional
meaning of certain particles like but, hence, or therefore.

CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES, on the other hand, are determined in a different way,

getting first the literal content or what is stated and then its relation to the COOPERATIVE
PRINCIPLE and the conversational principles or maxims. Among conversational implicatures, he
makes another distinction between particularized and generalized ones. PARTICULARIZED
CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES (PCIs from now on) are generated when uttering a sentence on a
particular occasion or context in virtue of particular features of that context. Let us take a well-
 11

known example of Grice’s. Suppose that A and B are talking about a mutual friend C, who is
working in a bank.

(8) A: How is C getting on in his job?

B: Oh, quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues, and he hasn’t been to prison yet.

It is clear that what B implied, suggested or meant is distinct from what B said; which can be that
C has not yet committed theft, as was expected from him, or that his ‘colleagues are really very
unpleasant and treacherous people’, (Grice 19967a/1989:24) or something along those lines, or
that’s what Grice assumes.

On the other hand, there are cases where the use of a certain form of words in an utterance
would normally (in the absence of special circumstances) carry such-and-such an implicature or
type of implicature. This is the case of GCIs. For instance, using again Grice’s own example,
anyone who utters

(9) X is meeting a woman this evening,

‘would normally implicate that the person to be met is someone other than X’s wife, mother,
sister, or perhaps even close platonic friend’ (Grice 1967a/1989:37).

Conversational implicatures, both PCIs and GCIs, have some special features.
CANCELLABILITY is one of the most important. A speaker who says that p, putatively implicating
that q, can explicitly cancel it, adding something like but not q or I do not mean to imply that q.
And it is contextually cancellable, as well, if one finds situations in which the utterance would
simply not carry the implicature. Cancellability can be used, in general, as a ‘test’ to distinguish
between what is said and implicatures;9 and that is what we will use it for, to distinguish between
what is said and what is implicated in the case of an omen-utterance.

Another feature is NON-DETACHABILITY. ‘An implicature is nondetachable insofar as it is

not possible to find another way of saying the same thing (or approximately the same thing)
 12

which simply lacks the implicature’ (Grice 1967b/1989:43). Using Grice’s example, if someone
said A tried to do x, (s)he would normally implicate that ‘there was a failure, or some chance of
failure, or that someone thinks or thought that there to be some chance of failure’ (ibid.). And this
implicature would also arise if one said A attempted to do x, A endeavored to do x or A set
himself to do x. Grice takes non-detachability to be a feature of all conversational implicatures,
generalized or particularized, except those based on his MAXIMS OF MANNER.We will make
reference to this feature when addressing the question of the content of uncertainty of an omen-
utterance (see subsection 5.1).

1.4. STATEMENTS AND ASSERTIONS. Oftentimes, the terms STATEMENT and ASSERTION (and their
respective cognates, to state and to assert; what is stated and what is asserted) are used as
equivalents. But, in what follows, it is extremely important to keep them clear and distinctly
separate. As we said above, we use statement for the utterance of a declarative sentence. So, in
our terminology, utterances of sentences such as

(10) It is raining,

(11) I will go to your party,

(12) I promise to bring you a present,

(13) I am glad you came,

are all statements. However, they are not all assertions. According to speech act theory (Austin
1962, Searle 1969), only 10 is an assertion; that is, an utterance with an assertive illocutionary
point. 11 is a commissive; 12 is a declarative;10 and 13 is an expressive. They differ from
assertions in, among other things, direction of fit, sincerity conditions, propositional content
conditions, and conditions of satisfaction. Assertions have WORDS-TO-WORLD direction of fit,
express the speaker’s belief on the propositional content, their propositional content represents
possible state-of-affairs, and their satisfaction conditions are just their truth-conditions.
 13

Commissives, in contrast, have WORLD-TO-WORDS direction of fit, express the speaker’s intention
to do what is represented by their propositional content, their propositional content represents a
future action by the speaker, and they are satisfied if and only if the speaker performs the action
represented by the proposition and does so in order to satisfy it. Declaratives and expressives
have their own specific conditions.11 So, we are using ‘assertion’ for statements with an
ASSERTIVE illocutionary point.

After having introduced our theoretical framework and some concepts that we will use in
this work, we will briefly give some syntactic characteristics of the particle omen, and say a few
words about Basque verb morphology, just in order to give an overview of the morphosyntactic
characteristics of omen.

2. MORPHOSYNTACTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF OMEN. In its canonical use, omen is attached to

conjugated verbs as part of the verbal complex. We are leaving aside, for now, the cases that are
different from that use, where omen appears somewhere else in the sentence (the so-called
Eastern use (Etxepare 2010)).12

Verbs in Basque can be synthetically or analytically/periphrastically inflected. The

periphrastic predicate is complex, with two elements: the main verb and the auxiliary verb. Take,
for example, the following simple sentence.13

(14) Emakume-a hel-du da.14

woman-DET.SG.ABS arrive-PFV 3SG.ABS.PRS.be
‘The woman has arrived.’

The main verb determines what event the sentence refers to, and it carries aspectual information,
while the auxiliary verb carries information about the argument structure in the sentence (subject,
object, and indirect object), tense, and mood.

Synthetic verbs, on the other hand, are single words.

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(15) Zu-k asko d-aki-zu.15

you-ERG much 3SG.ABS.PRS-know-2SG.ERG
‘You know a lot.’

Concerning the position of omen in the sentence, in affirmative sentences with synthetic
verbs it goes just before the verb.

(16) Eguraldi on-a omen da-tor.16

weather good-DET.SG.ABS REP 3SG.ABS.PRS-come
‘It is stated that good weather is coming.’

and with periphrastic ones between the main verb and the auxiliary.

(17) Eguraldi on-a egin-go omen d-u.

weather good-DET.SG.ABS do-PROSP REP 3SG.ABS.PRS-have
‘It is stated that there will be good weather.’

In negative sentences with synthetic verbs, it goes before the verb,

(18) Ez omen da-tor eguraldi on-ik.

not REP 3SG.ABS.PRS-come weather good-PRTV
‘It is stated that good weather is not coming.’

whereas with periphrastic verbs it is located before the auxiliary verb, with the auxiliary verb
moved ahead of the main verb.17

(19) Ez omen d-u eguraldi on-a

not REP 3SG.ABS.PRS-have weather good-DET.SG.ABS
egin-go.
do-PROSP
 15

‘It is stated that there will not be good weather.’

Let us summarize now what we take to constitute the received or standard view on the
meaning and use of the particle.

3. THE STANDARD VIEW ON OMEN. The following two claims sum up what we see as the standard
view on omen (see Zubeldia & Korta 2007 and Zubeldia 2010 for further details).

a. Omen signals that the proposition the speaker expresses was said by someone other than
herself.

This summarizes the definition given by the renowned Basque linguist and philologist Mitxelena
(1987):

Particle by means of which it is implied that the information expressed comes

from some other person or source. (Mitxelena 1987:244)18

Sarasola (1996) puts it in a different way:

The particle the speaker uses to express that what she is implying is known to her
by hearing (not by seeing). (Sarasola 1996:614)19

b. The speaker expresses uncertainty on the truth (or falsity) of the proposition expressed.

Euskaltzaindia [Royal Academy of the Basque language] (1987:515), amongst others,20 adds that
characteristic to claim (a):

Ei and omen. The modality of these particles has two sides linked to each other: a)
on the one hand, they express that what is said has been heard from someone else
and b) that the speaker cannot completely assure whether it is true or not.21
 16

We think that (a) and (b), even if they are not the result of serious semantic and pragmatic
study, conform a single (possibly inconsistent) view reflected in the ‘official’ lexicography that
preceded and followed the work of Euskaltzaindia. We take them to point to some important
aspects of the meaning and use of omen, but they are theoretically misguided in several respects.
In this work we will consider these two claims, starting from the latter.

4. WHAT IS STATED BY OMEN-UTTERANCES. In the literature on evidentiality there are various

theoretical debates, but we will focus on two of the most important ones. On the one hand, there
is a broad consensus that evidential elements take wide scope when they are embedded within
operators such as negation, the antecedent of a conditional, modal operators, and
communication/knowledge predicates. However, there are some evidential elements that behave
otherwise, getting narrow scope within certain operators (see e.g. Matthewson et al. 2007,
McCready & Ogata 2007, and Matthewson 2013), and we will see that this is the case with omen,
as well (subsection 4.2). This fact points to a propositional analysis of the particle omen.

On the other hand, we will discuss what content is targeted when an utterance containing
an evidential is assented/rejected/challenged: the reported content (p) or the evidential content
(pomen). We will see that, when an omen-utterance is rejected, both the reported content and the
evidential content can be the target. So, the results of the assent/dissent test point to the very
same conclusion regarding the contribution of omen (see subsection 4.1).

According to our take on the standard picture of omen, claim (a), which says that omen
signals that the proposition the speaker expresses was stated by someone other than herself,
means that the proposition expressed by the speaker of an omen-utterance corresponds just to
what the speaker of the reported utterance (or the original speaker) stated. They both would
express the same proposition p. The difference in their utterances would be the following one: the
original speaker states that p, whereas the current speaker of the omen-utterance does not.
 17

This, in the framework of speech act theory (Searle 1969), suggests that omen does not
contribute to the propositional content of the utterance, but is an illocutionary force indicator.
According to Faller (2002), an illocutionary force indicator like this will affect the illocutionary
force of the utterance; namely, an utterance that without the particle would count as a statement,
when it includes the particle has some other illocutionary force associated with reporting speech
acts. She introduces a new illocutionary force called presentation for the analysis of the Cuzco
Quechua reportative enclitic -si, which is very similar to omen in several aspects. She creates the
mentioned illocutionary force to explain the behaviour of -si, and represents the sentence It is
raining with -si as follows.

(20) Para-sha-n-si.
rain-PROG-3-si

p=‘It is raining.’
ILL=PRESENT(p)

SINC={∃s2[Assert(s2, p) ∧ s2 ∉ {h,s}]}

The illocutionary force (ILL) is that of PRESENT, and it indicates that the current speaker’s speech
act is one of presentation of another speaker’s assertion p. The sincerity condition (SINC)
associated with -si states that there is some speaker s2 who asserted p, and that s2 is neither the
hearer h nor the current speaker s. There is no condition that s believes p.

However, there are a couple of problems with this proposal. First, in Faller’s approach it
is not very clear how exactly this new illocutionary force, present, would fit within speech act
theory: which its illocutionary point is, which its conditions of satisfaction and success are, and
so on, when distinguishing it from assert. And second, the sincerity condition provided for
present does not seem correct, since it does not include a mental state of the speaker, as it should
according to speech act theory,22 but the existence of a state of affairs.23 Besides, the
assent/dissent test Faller uses for -si gives different results for omen.
 18

4.1. THE ASSENT/DISSENT TEST. The assent/dissent test says (see, for instance, Faller 2006:11) that
if an element can be directly questioned, doubted, rejected or accepted, it contributes to the
propositional content of the speech act; otherwise, it should be taken as an illocutionary force
indicator.24 Applied to a simple utterance such as

(21) a. Euri-a ari omen d-u,

rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG REP 3SG.ABS.PRS-have
‘It is stated that it’s raining.’

the test involves responses such as the following.

b. Egia al da hori?
true.DET.SG Q 3SG.ABS.PRS.be that
‘Is that true?’
c. Ez da egia hori.
not 3SG.ABS.PRS.be true.DET.SG that
‘That’s not true.’
d. Egia.
true.DET.SG
‘True’.

The question then is: what are we challenging by 21b, rejecting by 21c or accepting by 21d:

- that it is raining (p)? or

- that someone else stated that it is raining (pomen)?25

If only the former, then it indicates that omen does not contribute to the propositional content.
But our intuitions and tests tell us otherwise. Our intuition says that the challenge, rejection or
acceptance can be both about p (as in 22) (which would be the most common),26

(22) a. Egia al da euri-a ari

 19

true.DET.SG Q 3SG.ABS.PRS.be rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG

d-u-ela? Ez d-u-t entzu-ten

3SG.ABS.PRS-have-COMP not 3SG.ABS.PRS-have-1SG.ERG hear-IPFV
‘Is it true that it’s raining? I can’t hear it.’
b. Ez da egia euri-a ari
not 3SG.ABS.PRS.be true.DET.SG rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG

d-u-ela, urdin-urdin da-go eta.

3SG.ABS.PRS-have-COMP blue.blue 3SG.ABS.PRS-be as
‘It’s not true that it’s raining, as it’s very clear.’
c. Egia da euri-a ari
true.DET.SG 3SG.ABS.PRS.be rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG

d-u-ela. Ez al d-u-zu
3SG.ABS.PRS-have-COMP not Q 3SG.ABS.PRS-have-2SG.ERG
entzu-ten?
hear-IPFV
‘It’s true that it’s raining. Can’t you hear it?’

and about pomen (as in 23).

(23) a. Egia al da hori? Benetan norbait-ek

true.DET.SG Q 3SG.ABS.PRS.be that really someone-ERG
esan di-zu hori?
say.PFV 3SG.ABS.PRS.have-2SG.DAT that
‘Is it true? Did anybody tell you that?’
b. Ez da egia hori. Ez
not 3SG.ABS.PRS.be true.DET.SG that not
di-zu inor-k esan, zu-k
3SG.ABS.PRS.have-2SG.DAT someone-ERG say.PFV you-ERG
asma-tu d-u-zu.
make.up-PFV 3SG.ABS.PRS-have-2SG.ERG
‘That’s not true. Nobody told you that, you’ve made it up.’
 20

c. Egia. Ni-ri ere esan di-da-te.

true.DET.SG I-DAT also tell-PFV 3SG.ABS.PRS.have-1SG.DAT-1PL.ERG
‘True. I was also told that.’

However, we also ran an experiment about rejecting an omen-utterance, based on the

assent/dissent test, to collect and contrast the data.

EXPERIMENT 1. Some authors (Faller 2006, Matthewson et al. 2007, Murray 2010, and
Matthewson 2013, among others) use this test to provide evidence for determining whether
evidential elements contribute to the truth-conditions of the utterance or not. And we used it for
the same purpose for the particular case of omen. Our prediction was that the participants would
accept rejecting the evidential content of the omen-utterance, as they would accept rejecting the
reported content p.

METHOD

Participants. The participants were sixteen native Basque speakers, between 27 and 48 years old
(mean age: 32.35); 7 females and 9 males. They were speakers of the central dialect of Basque.

Materials and design. The experiment based on the assent/dissent test was restricted to the
rejecting response. It was run on a laptop, using slides. The experiment consisted of fifty-six
experimental items, scenarios with omen-utterances, and fifty-six control items, scenarios with
utterances using the verb esan ‘to say’. Esan-utterances were employed as a control, as there is a
consensus that this verb contributes to the truth-conditions of the utterance, and is not an
illocutionary force indicator.

The items consisted of scenarios together with conversations. In each scenario, first the
context was presented, that is to say, the situation and the characters. Then, a conversation
between two characters took place, in which a character made an omen-utterance in the case of
the experimental scenarios, and an esan-utterance in the case of the control scenarios. Finally, a
 21

rejection utterance (target utterance), the response of the second character or conversational
counterpart, was presented. In each scenario, the participants had to evaluate the rejection
response of the second character, according to a five-point scale of acceptance (1 not acceptable
at all and 5 totally acceptable). Half of the experimental items (twenty-eight) were cases where
the second character’s utterance was a rejection of the evidential content (pomen), whereas the
other half were cases where the rejection was of the reported content (p). So was in the case of
the control items: half of the items were cases where the second character’s utterance was a
rejection of the esan-content (pesan), whereas the other half were cases where it was a rejection of
the reported content (p). Thus, it is a 2x2 design, with element (omen vs. esan) and rejection (of p
vs. pomen/pesan) as within-subjects factors.

Twenty-eight scenarios were designed for the experiment, and each scenario had four
different conditions:

- Condition 1: an utterance rejecting the evidential content (pomen)

- Condition 2: an utterance rejecting the reported content p in the case of an omen-utterance
- Condition 3: an utterance rejecting the esan-content (pesan)
- Condition 4: an utterance rejecting the reported content p in the case of an esan-utterance.

Each scenario or context for its four conditions was nearly the same. It was completely identical
for the conditions 1 and 3, and almost identical, with a minor change, for the conditions 2 and 4.
This small adjustment was done in response to the slightly different kind of scenario needed in
condition 1 and 3 (that is to say, rejection of pomen and pesan, respectively) in comparison to
condition 2 and 4 (namely, rejection of p). In some scenarios, a different utterance was added in
each case (condition 1+3 vs. condition 2+4), so that it accommodated each kind of response (see
the scenario below and the appendix for an illustration).

So, there were one hundred and twelve items in all. These items were completely
randomized to run the experiment. The items (both experimental and control) were distributed in
four lists by conditions; that is to say, each list contained a different condition of each scenario,
so that each participant saw each scenario just once (twenty-eight items in all). Each list was
 22

presented to four subjects; so, another randomization was carried out within each list, to
guarantee that each participant saw the items in a different order. Moreover, it was controlled that
each participant started doing the experiment from a different item, and also that each subject did
not see more than two items of the same condition in a row.

In addition to these items, twenty-eight fillers (entailments, or controversial cases that are
considered either as entailments or presuppositions) were added to the experiment. They had the
same design as the experimental and control items. First the context was presented. Then, a
conversation between two characters took place, in which a character uttered a sentence. Finally,
a rejection utterance (target utterance), the response of the second character or conversational
counterpart, was presented. Half of the items were rejection of the literal content of the first
character’s utterance (what is said) and the other half were rejection of the entailment. Each of
these two groups were divided into two. In the case of the rejection of the literal content, half of
the rejections were expected to be totally acceptable by any participant, whereas the other half
were predicted to be totally unacceptable. And the same held in the case of the rejection of the
entailment: half of the rejections were anticipated to be totally acceptable, while the other half
were expected to be totally unacceptable. So, the fillers were divided into four groups of seven
items each. This was done in order to counterbalance the expected responses of acceptance in the
case of the experimental and control items.

The fillers were also randomized so that each participant saw them in a different order,
and they were inserted in between the experimental and control items, alternating one with the
other.

Both the conversations and responses were helped by drawings along with audio
recordings, that is to say, the participants listened to the conversations as they were reading them
from the slides.

Here (Figure 1) is a sample of an experimental scenario (of condition 1), and its
translation into English below (see appendix for conditions 2, 3, and 4 of similar scenarios).
 23

Bai, zera! Ez dizute

esan halakorik,
Xabier eta Maialen lanean ari dira fakultatean, Xabierren asmatu egin duzu
Gelditu gabe lanean jarraitzeko.
bulegoan, eta ez dute ikusten zer eguraldi dagoen, ari omen du euria.
bulegoak ez baitu kanpora ematen duen leihorik.

Maialen nekatuta dago jada, eta kalera joan nahi du.

Xabierrek, berriz, lana bukatu nahiko luke. Tratua
proposatu dio Maialeni: eguraldi ona badago, bere horretan
utziko dute lana; euria ari badu, berriz, lanean segituko
dute.

Telefonoz deitu diote Xabierri. Elkarrizketa bukatuta

telefonoa eskegi du. Maialenek elkarrizketa guztia entzun
du, Xabierrek oso altu baitauka telefonoaren bolumena.
!!"#$%#&'%()"*$)+%)&$,+%+-"*"*$"#+*()&*+$"./"#+$0/##"(+*1$
Iluntzeko planari buruz aritu dira hizketan. !
! ! ! !2 $$$$$$$$$3$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$4 $ $$$5 $$$$$$$$$$$6 !!
!"#$%& "#$%&!'('!')!$#&(*&((+& !,--------,--------,--------,--------, !.(&/&0!$#&(*&((+&! !!!!!!! !!

FIGURE 1

English translation:

Slide 1. Xabier and Maialen are working at the faculty, at Xabier’s office, and they cannot see
what the weather is like, since the office does not have any window.

Maialen is already tired, and wants to go out, whereas Xabier would like to finish their work. He
proposes a deal to Maialen: if it is good weather, they will stop working, whereas if it is raining,
they will go on working.

Xabier has a phone call. After he finishes his conversation, he hangs up. Maialen hears all the
conversation, as the volume on Xabier’s phone is very loud. The conversation was about the plan
for the evening.

Slide 2.
- Xabier: It is raining [omen] a lot. (It is stated that it is raining a lot)
- Maialen: No way! They haven’t told you that, you’ve made it up to go on working.

What do you think about Maialen’s answer in this context?

1 2 3 4 5
|––––––––|––––––––|––––––––|––––––––|
 24

Not acceptable at all Totally acceptable

Procedure. At the beginning, the task was presented, instructions given, and the participants had
the chance to ask questions to clarify possible doubts. They were told that the aim of this
questionnaire was to analyze how people use language, to know people’s intuitions on language.
They were asked not to look at grammaticality, but to evaluate whether the utterance given was
appropriate or not in that context.

When they were ready, the experiment started. The participants were allowed to go back
and forth through the slides of the same scenario, whenever they needed to check some
information, but once they evaluated the item and they were in the next scenario, they could not
go back any more. At the end of each scenario, a black slide appeared, signaling that a new
scenario was coming. They had to give their responses aloud, and the experimenter wrote them
down.

The post-experiment interview revealed that no participant had become aware of the
purpose of the experiment.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. The results of the descriptive statistics are reported below (Table 1).

Descriptive statistics
Mean Median Values
Minimum Maximum
pomen 4.6608 4.7857 3.57 5.00
p (omen) 4.6251 4.7143 3.71 5.00
pesan 4.6429 4.6429 3.86 5.00
p (esan) 4.6696 4.7143 4.14 5.00
TABLE 1. Descriptive statistics of the assent/dissent experiment

The mean and median shown in the table correspond to the average and middle score of
the scores of all participants in each of the four conditions (pomen, p (in the case of omen), pesan,
and p (in the case of esan)). And the minimum and maximum values correspond to the minimum
 25

and maximum values from the means of the scores of each subject in each condition. These
results show that most of the subjects accept rejecting the evidential content and the esan-content
as well as the reported content.

The Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed Rank test indicates a non-significant difference

between the rejection of the reported content and the rejection of the evidential content, both in
the case of the particle omen (Z=.000, n=16, p=1.000, two-tailed) and the verb esan (Z=-.212,
n=16, p=.832). It indicates, in the same way, that there is no significant difference between the
rejection of the reported content in the case of omen as compared with the case of esan (Z=-.210,
n=16, p=.833), and nor is there in the rejection of the evidential content compared in the two
cases (Z=-.268, n=16, p=.788).

So, given these null results, we cannot reject the null hypothesis. However, nor can we
accept it. Hence, we do not have an experimental support (there is no effect) for our hypothesis
that the participants will accept both rejecting the reported content and the evidential content.
However, we think these results are still interesting; they point towards a fact, and participants’
intuitions agree with our intuitions in this: should you have a context, it is acceptable to reject
directly the evidential content of an omen-utterance, contrary to what is reported for evidential
elements cross-linguistically.27 The subjects took that the rejection can target either the reported
content (p) or the evidential content (pomen). More importantly, the results are similar to those for
the verb form esan du(te) p ‘He/she(they) said that p’, ‘It is said that p’. And no author would
take a reporting phrase like they say that as being an illocutionary force indicator not contributing
to the truth-conditions of the utterance containing it.

So, from the results of our experiment we cannot draw a firm conclusion with statistical
support about the possible contribution of omen.28 However, we found that other people’s
intuitions agree with and reinforce ours. And, furthermore, we still have the results of the scope
test, which give us strong evidence for the conclusion that omen does contribute to the truth-
conditions of the utterance.
 26

4.2. THE SCOPE TEST.29 According to the scope criterion (see, for instance, Recanati 1989), if the
meaning of an expression falls within the scope of a logical operator, then it contributes to the
propositional content.30 Using as the scope-bearing operators sentential (external) negation,
communication predicates (such as esan ‘to say’, erantzun ‘to answer’), and knowledge
predicates (kontuan hartu ‘to take into account’, among others), it is clear that omen’s semantic
contribution takes narrow scope.

It can be embedded under sentential (external) negation.

(24) Ez da egia euri-a ari omen

not 3SG.ABS.PRS.be true.DET.SG rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG REP

d-u-ela.
3SG.ABS.PRS-have-COMP
‘It is not true that it is stated that it is raining.’

The utterance must be interpreted as

(25) IT IS NOT TRUE THAT SOMEONE ELSE STATED THAT IT IS RAINING,

and not as

(26) SOMEONE ELSE STATED THAT IT IS NOT TRUE THAT IT IS RAINING.

So, omen gets narrow scope within external negation.

And here is an example of a knowledge predicate, namely kontuan hartu ‘to take into
account’.

(27) Ez z-u-en kontuan har-tu 36-ko

not 3SG.ERG.PST-have-PST into.account take-PFV 36-GEN
gerra has-i zen-ean, Lizardi-ren
 27

war.DET.SG start-PFV 3SG.ABS.PST-LOC Lizardi-GEN

alargun-ak Oria ibai-ra bota omen
widow-DET.SG.ERG Oria river-DET.SG.ADL throw.PFV REP

z-it-u-ela liburu gehien-ak. (Lertxundi 2001:10)

3SG.ERG.PST-3PL.ABS-have-COMP book most-DET.PL
‘(S)he did not take into account that it is stated that, when the war of ‘36 started,
Lizardi’s widow threw most of the books into the Oria river.’

It must be interpreted as

(28) (S)HE DID NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THAT SOMEONE ELSE STATED THAT LIZARDI’S
WIDOW THREW MOST OF THE BOOKS INTO THE ORIA RIVER,

and not as

(29) SOMEONE ELSE STATED THAT (S)HE DID NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THAT LIZARDI’S
WIDOW THREW MOST OF THE BOOKS INTO THE ORIA RIVER.

Again, omen gets narrow scope within this kind of predicate.31

So, following the results of the scope test, we conclude that omen contributes to the
propositional content of the utterance, the very same conclusion first pointed out by the
assent/dissent test.

To sum up, we found, first, that the evidential content can be dissented with, as far as the
participants’ intuitions are concerned, and, second, that the evidential content gets narrow scope
within some operators.

4.3. FURTHER TESTS. We can add a simpler test to the previous ones.
 28

The following utterance is not acceptable.

(30) #Euri-a ari omen d-u, baina inor-k

rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG REP 3SG.ABS.PRS-have but someone-ERG
ez d-u esan euri-a ari
not 3SG.ABS.PRS-have say.PFV rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG

d-u-ela.
3SG.ABS.PRS-have-COMP
‘It is stated that it is raining, but nobody said that it is raining.’

This is a plain contradiction, which shows that the evidential content must be part of the
propositional content of the utterance. The absurdity of 30 contrasts with the acceptability of the
following utterances.

(31) Euri-a ari omen d-u, baina ez

rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG REP 3SG.ABS.PRS-have but not
d-u-t uste euri-rik ari
3SG.ABS.PRS-have-1SG.ERG think rain-PRTV PROG

d-u-en-ik.
3SG.ABS.PRS-have-COMP-PRTV
‘It is stated that it is raining, but I do not believe it is raining.’

(32) Euri-a ari omen d-u, baina ez

rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG REP 3SG.ABS.PRS-have but not
d-u ari euri-rik.32
3SG.ABS.PRS-have PROG rain-PRTV
‘It is stated that it is raining, but it is not raining.’

They are completely acceptable.

 29

These and other reasons lead us to conclude that omen does contribute to the proposition
expressed, to the truth-conditions of the omen-utterance. An omen-utterance is an assertion.
Adding omen affects its propositional content. An omen-utterance reporting p does not assert that
p, but that someone else stated that p.

This conclusion meshes with the results of some analyses of other reportatives in other
languages; for instance, the works of McCready & Ogata (2007) for Japanese evidentials,
Ifantidou (2001) for Greek taha, and Schenner (2008a) for German sollen.

So, these results show that the distinction implied by claim (a) in the standard view is not
the right one to make. In an omen-utterance, we do not have to distinguish between the statement
and the nuance omen adds to it. There are two different propositions: the proposition p expressed
by an utterance without omen and the proposition pomen expressed by an omen-utterance. Both
utterances are statements, but they state different things, not the same one.33

Hence, we cannot analyze omen as contributing to the illocutionary force of the utterance,
nor —as we shall see— as generating a presupposition, as the modal analysis of evidentials
proposes (see, for example, Izvorski 1997 and Matthewson et al. 2007). These works propose to
analyze evidential elements in Bulgarian and in St’át’imcets as epistemic modal elements with an
evidential presupposition which restricts the modal base, following Kratzer’s (1981, 1991)
possible world semantics: they contribute a modal content to the proposition (that p is possibly or
necessarily true), and the evidential content is a presupposition that restricts the modal base. We
exclude analyzing omen as generating a presupposition mainly because of two reasons. First,
because of the facts about scope. It has been pointed out that the presuppositional analysis cannot
explain properly the embedding cases (see e.g. McCready & Ogata 2007:179). So, if this is right,
taking the evidential content as a presupposition, we would not be able to explain the cases where
omen takes narrow scope under external negation and communication and knowledge predicates
(as in examples 24 and 27 discussed in subsection 4.2 above).

Second, many authors argue that presuppositions are cancellable (see, among others,
Beaver 2001:14-18, Green 2000:459-465, Potts 2007:484, and Soames 1989:573-582). Green
 30

(2000:464-465) says that one theme that unifies theories of presupposition projection offered by
disparate authors is that ‘presuppositions can be canceled either by features of the context of
utterance or by features of the syntactic context in which the presupposition trigger occurs’. He
gives an example where the conversational record already contains propositions conflicting with
a potential presupposition, and says that in these cases the presupposition is not generated by the
utterance of a sentence in which the presupposition trigger occurs. Consider his example.

(33) There is no present King of France. Therefore, the present King of France is not
bald.

It is clear that the speaker’s second utterance does not presuppose the existence of a unique King
of France, because she explicitly disavowed that commitment in her previous utterance.

In contrast, as we have just seen from example 30, the evidential component of an omen-
utterance cannot be cancelled: a contradiction arises when trying to cancel it.

So, these facts suggest that the evidential content of an omen-utterance cannot be analyzed
as generating a presupposition. And, hence, we would say that omen cannot be analyzed as a
modal element.34

Thus, we conclude that omen has to be analyzed as contributing to the propositional

content of the utterance. But what kind of contribution does omen make?

5. THE CONTRIBUTION OF OMEN. We concluded in the previous section that omen contributes to
the propositional content of the utterance. But what kind of contribution does it make? We will
first consider the fact that omen has been widely related to the expression of uncertainty. We will
argue that this content is not part of the meaning of the omen-sentence, but a GCI generated by
uttering it (subsection 5.1). We will conclude, then, that the speaker, by using an omen-utterance,
expresses that she is reporting what someone else stated. This is the contribution of omen
(subsections 5.2 and 5.3).
 31

5.1. OMEN AND UNCERTAINTY. Many grammarians and lexicographers hold that the speaker using
omen expresses uncertainty—most importantly Euskaltzaindia (1987:515), as we saw in the
quote given in section 3. Thus, when the speaker uses omen, she expresses two things: that what
is said has been heard from someone else and that the speaker cannot assure whether it is true or
not, and both are necessary. So a speaker will not use omen if she is certain about the truth-value
of a proposition. And, of course, she will not use it if it is not something heard from someone
else.

Consider the following example.

(34) 1.000 zigarro-ren gain-eko zerga igo-ta

1.000 cigarette-INDF.GEN top-DET.SG.GEN tax.DET.SG raise-PTCP
eta tabako-a-ren gutxieneko prezio-a zehaztu-ta
and tobacco-DET.SG-GEN minimal price-DET.SG set-PTCP
irits-i-ko omen da arazo-a-ren
arrive-PTCP-PROSP REP 3SG.ABS.PRS.be problem-DET.SG-GEN
soluzio-a. … (Berria, 11-02-2006:2)
solution-DET.SG.ABS
‘It is stated that the solution of the problem will arise after raising the tax on
1000 cigarettes and setting the minimal price of tobacco. …’

Here the speaker (the writer, in this case) may be taken to be uncertain whether the solution will
arise after raising the tax and setting the minimal price, as is corroborated by the next utterance.

(35) Atzo onar-tu z-u-te-n zerga-k

yesterday accept-PFV 3PL.ERG.PST-have-3PL.ERG-PST tax-DET.PL
igo-tze-a. Prezio-ak igo-ko dir-en ikuskizun
raise-NR-DET.SG price-DET.PL raise-PROSP are-COMP to.be.seen
da-go. Prezio-ak igo-ta arazo-a
 32

3SG.ABS.PRS-be price-DET.PL raise-PTCP problem-DET.SG

konpon-du-ko d-en ere bai. (Berria, 11-02-2006:2)
solve-PTCP-PROSP 3SG.ABS.PRS.be-COMP as well
‘They accepted raising the taxes yesterday. It remains to be seen whether the
prices will be put up, as well as whether the problem will be solved after raising
the prices.’

In this case, it is clear that the writer is reporting that someone else stated that the problem will be
solved by raising the tax and that she is uncertain about that. According to the standard view, that
would be the case with all omen-utterances, so that uncertainty would be always expressed by the
use of the particle. However, our findings show that this is not correct.

PART OF THE MEANING? If uncertainty were part of the meaning of an omen-sentence, all omen-
utterances would carry that content. But, checking the corpora,35 we found that many examples
do not involve uncertainty; quite the opposite, the speaker seems to be pretty sure about the truth
or falsity of the reported proposition. Consider the following example.

(36) Gauza-k ondo omen d-oa-z. Bada,

thing-DET.PL.ABS well REP 3PL.ABS.PRS-go-3PL Yet
gauza-k ez d-oa-z ondo, eta are
thing-DET.PL.ABS not 3PL.ABS.PRS-go-3PL well and even
okerr-ago joan-go dira kontu-ak etorkizun
bad-more go-PROSP 3PL.ABS.PRS.be thing-DET.PL.ABS future
hurbil-ea-n. … (Gonzalez 2009:5)
near-DET.SG-LOC
‘It is stated that things are going well. Yet things are not going well, and things
will go even worse in the near future. …’

After reporting someone else saying that things are going well, the writer explicitly negates that
proposition. And there is no hint of uncertainty on his part. It does not sound like a self-
 33

correction either. Not at all. In fact, there are many cases in which the speaker expresses her
certainty about the falsity of the reported proposition, as in 36, and many cases in which she
shows herself to be certain about its truth as well, as in the following example.

(37) … baño gu-re osaba-k eta oik oñ-ez

but we-GEN uncle-DET.PL.ABS and they.ABS foot-INS
ju-te emen-tzien36 Ordizi-a lane-a, oñ-ez, oñ-ez,
go-IPFV REP-3PL.ABS.PST.be Ordizia-ADL work-ADL foot-INS foot-INS
oñ-ez. (Oral corpus 2001)
foot-INS
‘It is stated that our uncles and company used to go to Ordizia on foot, on foot,
on foot, on foot.’

The speaker, after saying the omen-utterance, repeats three times, reinforcing it, the adverbial
phrase on foot that appears in the focus position of the utterance, and it is clear, especially in its
oral version (Oral corpus 2001), that she is certain about the truth of the proposition expressed by
the original speaker. However, it appears that in its English translation, at least, this could be
taken merely as a repetition for rhetorical effect. But consider the following example.

(38) Jende-a-ren sartu-irten-ak konputa-tzen dit-u-en

people-DET.SG-GEN visit-DET.PL.ABS compute-IPFV 3PL.ABS.PRS-have-COMP
neurgailu bat ere instala-tu omen
measurer one also install-PFV REP

d-u-te aurten. Ea zer d-io-n

3SG.ABS.PRS-have-3PL.ERG this.year Q what 3SG.ABS.PRS-say-COMP
aparatu-ak bihar arrats-ean. (Zabala 2012)
machine-DET.SG.ERG tomorrow afternoon-DET.SG.LOC
‘It is stated that this year they also installed a measurer that computes people’s
visits. Let us see what the machine says tomorrow late afternoon.’
 34

In this example, the speaker is talking about a measurer for the visits to a well-known Basque
book and disc fair held every year in the Basque Country. From what he says afterwards, it can
be inferred that he is totally certain that this measurer was installed in the fair, as he is waiting for
the results of its measurement.

To sum up. Omen is felicitous even if the reported proposition is (i) known to be false or
(ii) known to be true.37 The only thing that is present in all the examples is the indication that the
speaker is reporting what someone else stated. She might be uncertain about the truth or falsity of
the reported proposition, or she might not. This suggests that it is wrong to take the expression of
uncertainty as part of the (semantic) meaning of omen-sentences. Moreover, if it were part of the
meaning, some sort of oddity (a contradiction or a sort of Moore’s paradox) would arise when
making an omen-statement (with its corresponding expression of uncertainty) followed by a clear
expression of certainty (see below). But this is not the case. So, we conclude that the expression
of uncertainty is not part of the meaning of omen-sentences.

PART OF THE PRAGMATIC CONTENT? Since it is not part of the semantic meaning of omen-
sentences, it follows that, if present, the speaker’s uncertainty belongs to pragmatic content. Now,
since context also takes part in determining the literal truth-conditions of the utterance (Gricean
what is stated), it remains to be seen whether the uncertainty attributed to omen in context
contributes to what is stated or to the implicatures of the utterance. Assuming that the elements of
the EXPLICIT referential content are not cancellable, Grice’s cancellability test works as a criterion
to decide that.

Let us take examples 34 and 35 again. The truth of the reported proposition (that
increasing the taxes on cigarettes would solve ‘the problem’) is questioned by the speaker. Now,
if the speaker had added something like 39 instead of 35,

(39) Ziur na-go neurri horiek hartu-ta

sure 1SG.ABS.PRS-be measure those take-PTCP
irits-i-ko d-ela arazo-a-ren
 35

arrive-PTCP-PROSP 3SG.ABS.PRS.be-COMP problem-DET.SG-GEN

soluzio-a.
solution-DET.SG.ABS
‘I’m sure that the problem will be solved with those measures.’

there would be no contradiction. The uncertainty would just disappear. So, the expression of
uncertainty is explicitly cancellable. This suggests that it has to be considered, when present, as
an implicature of omen-utterances. But what kind of implicature?

The fact that the implicature of uncertainty is associated with the particle omen may
suggest, at first sight, that it is a conventional implicature. However, we think this is not the case.
On the one hand, the very category of conventional implicatures is questioned in post-Gricean
pragmatics (see Bach 1999, for example); and, on the other hand, which is more important, it
seems that if there are such implicatures, they are not cancellable (see, among others, Grice
1967b/1989,38 Horn 1985, and Potts 2005). Moreover, if conventional, the implicature would
only arise with omen-utterances and not with other ways of saying the same thing; but this is not
the case. Take, for instance, the equivalent of 34 above containing a reportative verb esan ‘to say’
instead of omen.

(40) Esan d-u-te 1.000 zigarro-ren gain-eko

say.PFV 3SG.ABS.PRS-have-3PL.ERG 1.000 cigarette-INDF.GEN top-DET.SG.GEN
zerga igo-ta eta tabako-a-ren gutxieneko
tax.DET.SG raise-PTCP and tobacco-DET.SG-GEN minimal
prezio-a zehaztu-ta irits-i-ko d-ela
price-DET.SG set-PTCP arrive-PTCP-PROSP 3SG.ABS.PRS.be-COMP
arazo-a-ren soluzio-a. …
problem-DET.SG-GEN solution-DET.SG.ABS
‘They said that the solution of the problem will arise after raising the tax on 1000
cigarettes and setting the minimal price of tobacco. …’
 36

The uncertainty of the speaker remains the same. This close connection between what is
said and the implicature is what Grice calls the non-detachability of conversational implicatures
(see subsection 1.3). We conclude, then, that the content of uncertainty is not a conventional
implicature. So, we are left with conversational implicatures. But, again, which kind:
particularized or generalized ones?

Remember that the inference of PCIs requires a particular utterance context, while in the
case of GCIs just ‘the use of a certain form of words in an utterance would normally (in the
absence of special circumstances) carry’ the implicature (Grice 1967a/1989:37). This could well
be the case with omen. It would also explain why the standard view on the uncertainty attached to
omen is so widespread: by default, its use in the absence of particular circumstances would carry
the implicature that the speaker is uncertain about the truth of the utterance she is reporting. GCIs
are very close to conventional meaning: ‘Even this [a demonstration of the derivation of a
conversational implicature from conversational principles and other data] may not be sufficient to
provide a decisive distinction between a conversational implicature and a case in which what was
originally a conversational implicature has become conventionalized’ (Grice 1967b/1989:43).

Furthermore, we think that the case of the uncertainty associated with omen parallels the
Gricean account of the ignorance associated with believe (see Grice 1967b/1989 and Levinson
1983 for the case of believe; see Grice 1961 and Levinson 2000, for other cases of GCIs, such as
the disjunction or, the conjunction and, the conditional if, numerals, scalars (such as quantifiers,
modals, adverbs), double negations, bridging, etc.).

Consider the contrast between 41 and 42.

(41) It’s raining.

(42) I believe that it’s raining.

 37

41 counts as a statement that it is raining. And, when the speaker says this, she expresses (and
does not merely implicate) the belief that it is raining. In 42, on the other hand, the speaker does
not state that it is raining, but only that she believes that it is raining. In general, 42 conveys that
the speaker does not know that it is raining, namely, that she is not certain. But this expression of
uncertainty is cancellable either explicitly or contextually. It is not part of the meaning or literal
content of 42, but a GCI.

Now consider

(43) Euri-a ari d-u.

rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG 3SG.ABS.PRS-have
‘It’s raining.’

(44) Euri-a ari omen d-u.

rain-DET.SG.ABS PROG REP 3SG.ABS.PRS-have
‘It is stated that it’s raining.’

43 states that it is raining. 44 does not. The statement is that someone else stated that it is raining.
In general, this may be associated with a lack of certainty on the truth (or falsity) of the reported
proposition (as in example 34 above). But this is contextually or explicitly cancellable, as in the
case of I believe.

So, we conclude that the expression of uncertainty is a GCI. It is inferred from the
utterance of an omen-sentence, in general, without having any further information or a particular
context in mind, taking into account that omen means that we are reporting the information we
got from someone else. It is inferred assuming that the speaker is observing the Cooperative
Principle and, more specifically, the second maxim of quality: ‘Do not say that for which you
lack adequate evidence’.39 That can explain why she produces an omen-utterance instead of an
utterance without it. Using omen the speaker can be taken, in general, to distance herself from the
truth of the reported utterance, expressing some degree of uncertainty about it. In particular
 38

circumstances, the uncertainty can be present or not, and certainty can also be implied without
contradiction.

Hence, this is how we re-interpret claim (b) from the standard view. Uncertainty has now
its proper place in the picture of omen: it is not part of the meaning of an omen-sentence, but a
GCI that can be generated by an omen-utterance.40

So, then, the expression of uncertainty does not belong to the meaning of the omen-
sentence. Let us see now what this meaning is.

5.2. THE MEANING OF OMEN-SENTENCES. Regarding the context-invariant (semantic) meaning of

omen-sentences, we contend that the contribution of omen is basically the following one:

The speaker, by using an omen-utterance, expresses that she is reporting what someone
else stated.

Or more precisely, given a sentence S, the proposition p expressed by an utterance of S, and an

utterance uomen reporting p, the meaning of an omen-sentence (M-Somen) can be rendered as

(M-Somen) p WAS STATED BY SOMEONE OTHER THAN THE SPEAKER OF uomen.

As we already said, we use stated because the proposition p has to be stated by the
original speaker, in order to be able to be reported by omen. The results of another experiment
(which we can call the reportability experiment) show that non-literal contents (PCIs and
presuppositions, at least) cannot be reported by means of omen.

EXPERIMENT 2. We designed this experiment to see what kind of contents can be reported by
means of omen in order to make more precise the formulation given for the omen-sentence. Our
intuition, and, hence, the prediction, was that we cannot report non-literal contents by means of
 39

omen, whereas we can report the literal content. However, we did an experiment to contrast these
intuitions. We restricted the experiment to PCIs and presuppositions.

METHOD

Participants. The participants were twenty-two native Basque speakers, between 22 and 64 years
old (mean age: 40.2); 11 females and 11 males. They were speakers of different dialects of
Basque: twelve from the Gipuzkoa dialect, five from the Navarre dialect, and five from the
Eastern dialects.

Materials and design. The experiment was run on a laptop, using slides. The questionnaire
consisted of twenty-four scenarios or contexts together with conversations;41 sixteen were
scenarios of PCIs and eight of presuppositions. The scenarios with omen-utterances were the
experimental stimuli, and the remaining were scenarios with esan ‘to say’-utterances, which were
employed as control. The same scenarios used for the omen-utterances were used for esan-
utterances, after changing the characters. In each scenario, first, the context and the characters
were presented. Then, a conversation between some characters took place. A character said
something, and later on her/his conversational counterpart reported to a third character what the
first one had said, making use of two different omen-utterances: one that reported the literal
content, and the other one that reported a possible PCI/presupposition conveyed by the first
speaker’s utterance. In each scenario, the participant had to evaluate these two omen-utterances
separately, according to a five-point scale of acceptance (1 totally acceptable and 5 not acceptable
at all). So, it is a 2x2 design, with element (omen vs. esan) and literalness (literal vs. non-literal)
as within-subjects factors. In some cases the non-literal content was a PCI and in some others a
presupposition.

The scenarios were presented randomly, and so were the two utterances to be evaluated in
each scenario.
 40

Both the conversations and the responses were presented along with audio recordings,
that is to say, the participants heard the conversations as they were reading them from the slides.

Here (Figure 2) is a sample of a scenario of an implicature in Basque, and its translation

into English below (see Zubeldia 2010 for further details and examples).

Pozik jarri da Iñaxi hori entzunda. Mirentxu lagunarengana

Joxe Manuel eta Iñaxi joan denean, ezin izan du poza gorde, eta Mirentxuk
elkarrekin paseatzen dabiltza. nabaritu dio zerbait esan nahi diola.

Zu zara nire bihotzeko

Gustura egon zara
azukre koxkorra.
Joxe Manuelekin, ezta?
Zer esan dizu, bada?

Egokiak al dira Iñaxiren erantzun hauek?

Adierazi bakoitzaren egokitasuna 1etik 5era.
a. b.
Ni omen naiz haren bihotzeko Ni maite omen nau gehien
azukre koxkorra. munduan.

Egokitasuna:
1.  Erabat egokia da.
2.  Ez nago ziur, baina esango nuke egokia dela.
3.  Ez dakit egokia den edo ez.
4.  Ez nago ziur, zalantzak ditut, baina esango nuke ez dela egokia.
5.  Ez da egokia.

FIGURE 2

English translation:

Slide 1. Joxe Manuel and Iñaxi are walking together.

- Joxe Manuel: You are the cream in my coffee.42

Slide 2. Iñaxi is happy after hearing this. When she has met her friend Mirentxu, she cannot hide
her happiness, and Mirentxu has noticed that she wants to tell her something.
 41

- Mirentxu: You felt happy with Joxe Manuel, didn’t you? What did he tell you?

Slide 3. Are the following answers by Iñaxi appropriate? Rate the appropriateness of each answer
from 1 to 5.

a. I am [omen] the cream in his coffee. (It is stated that I am the cream in his coffee.)
b. He loves [omen] me most in the world. (It is stated that he loves me most in the world.)

Appropriateness:

1. It’s completely appropriate.

2. I’m not sure, but I’d say that it’s appropriate.
3. I don’t know whether it’s appropriate or not.
4. I’m not sure, I have doubts, but I’d say that it’s not appropriate.
5. It’s not appropriate.

Let us present now a scenario of a presupposition.

Eñaut eta Estitxu taberna batean daude. Jo, hau marka hau! Olaizolak
irabazi egin dio berriro Barriolari!

Telebista jarrita dago, eta Barriola eta

Olaizolaren arteko partida ikusten ari da jendea.

Estitxu eta Eñaut hizketan ari dira, ez dira ari

partida jarraitzen.

Estitxuk parez pare du partida ikusten ari den

gizon bat.

(5)
 42

Egokiak al dira Estitxuk Eñauti esandako hauek?

a. b.
Beste batean ere
Olaizolak irabazi egin omen dio
irabazi omen zion
berriro Barriolari.
Olaizolak Barriolari.

Egokitasuna:
1.  Erabat egokia da.
2.  Ez nago ziur, baina esango nuke egokia dela.
3.  Ez dakit egokia den edo ez.
4.  Ez nago ziur, zalantzak ditut, baina esango nuke ez dela egokia.
5.  Ez da egokia.

FIGURE 3

English translation:

Slide 1. Eñaut and Estitxu are in a bar. The TV is on, and the people are watching the match
between Barriola and Olaizola [two well-known Basque hand-ball players]. Estitxu and Eñaut are
chatting, they are not following the match. The man in front of Estitxu is watching it.

Slide 2.

- [The man says] Olaizola has beaten Barriola once again!

Slide 3. Are the following comments by Estitxu to Eñaut appropriate? Rate the appropriateness of
each answer from 1 to 5.

a. Olaizola beat [omen] Barriola some other time as well. (It is stated that Olaizola beat
Barriola some other time as well.)
b. Olaizola has beaten [omen] Barriola again. (It is stated that Olaizola has beaten Barriola
again.]

Appropriateness:

1. It’s completely appropriate.

 43

2. I’m not sure, but I’d say that it’s appropriate.

3. I don’t know whether it’s appropriate or not.
4. I’m not sure, I have doubts, but I’d say that it’s not appropriate.
5. It’s not appropriate.

Procedure. At the beginning of the experiment, the task was presented, instructions given, and
the participants had the chance to ask questions to clarify possible doubts. When they were ready,
the experiment started. They were allowed to go back and ahead whenever they wanted. At the
end of each scenario, a black slide appeared, which meant that a new scenario was coming. They
had to give their responses aloud, and the experimenter wrote them down.

The post-experiment interview revealed that no participant had become aware of the
purpose of the experiment.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. We will see the results concerning the cases of PCIs and
presuppositions separately.

Particularized conversational implicatures. The results of the descriptive statistics are reported
below (see Table 2).

Descriptive statistics
Mean Median Values
Minimum Maximum
Omen Literal content 1.0455 1.0000 1.00 1.50
Non-literal content 4.1136 5.0000 1.50 5.00
Esan Literal content 1.0227 1.0000 1.00 1.50
Non-literal content 4.5000 5.0000 1.50 5.00
TABLE 2. Descriptive statistics of the reportability experiment (PCIs)

The mean and median shown in the table correspond to the average and middle score of
the scores of all participants in each of the four conditions (literal content in the case of omen,
non-literal content in the case of omen, literal content in the case of esan and non-literal content
 44

in the case of esan). And the minimum and maximum values correspond to the minimum and
maximum values from the median of the scores of each subject in each condition.These results
show that most of the subjects accept reporting the literal content by means of omen and esan, but
they do not accept reporting the non-literal content (PCIs, in this case).

The Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed Rank test indicated a highly significant difference
between acceptance of reporting the literal content and the PCI both in the case of the particle
omen (Z=-4.156, n=22, p=.000, two-tailed) and the verb esan (Z=-4.268, n=22, p=.000). Whereas
it indicated that there is a non-significant difference between acceptance of reporting the literal
content in the case of omen as compared with the case of esan (Z=-1.000, n=22, p=.317) and
between acceptance of reporting the PCI comparing the two elements (Z=-1.693, n=22, p=.090).

So, these results are in accordance with our predictions. Hence, we conclude that the
subjects, in general, tend not to accept reporting the PCIs by means of omen, whereas they accept
reporting the literal contents. And the results are similar to those for the verb esan ‘to say’.

Presuppositions. We present the results of the descriptive statistics (Table 3).

Descriptive statistics
Mean Median Values
Minimum Maximum
Omen Literal content 1.0000 1.0000 1.00 1.00
Non-literal content 3.5909 4.2500 1.00 5.00
Esan Literal content 1.0000 1.0000 1.00 1.00
Non-literal content 3.8864 4.5000 1.00 5.00
TABLE 3. Descriptive statistics of the reportability experiment (presuppositions)

As in Table 2, the mean and median shown in this table correspond to the average and
middle score of the scores of all participants in each of the four conditions (literal content in the
case of omen, non-literal content in the case of omen, literal content in the case of esan and non-
literal content in the case of esan). And the minimum and maximum values correspond to the
minimum and maximum values from the median of the scores of each subject in each
condition.These results show that most of the subjects accept reporting the literal content by
 45

means of omen and esan, but they do not accept reporting the non-literal content
(presuppositions, in this case).

The Wilcoxon Matched-Pairs Signed Rank test indicated a highly significant difference
between acceptance of reporting the literal content and the presupposition both in the case of the
particle omen (Z=-3.951, n=22, p=.000, two-tailed) and the verb esan (Z=-3.980, n=22, p=.000).
Whereas it indicated that there is a non-significant difference between acceptance of reporting the
literal content comparing the two cases (Z=.000, n=22, p=1.000) and reporting the presupposition
(Z=-1.925, n=22, p=.054).

These results are, again, in accordance with our predictions. So, we conclude that the
subjects, in general, accept reporting literal contents by means of omen, whereas they do not
accept reporting presuppositions.

GENERAL DISCUSSION. Thus, following the results of the reportability experiment (taking together
the results of the cases of PCIs and presuppositions), it looks as if we cannot report non-literal
contents (PCIs and presuppositions, at least) by means of the particle omen, whereas we can
report the literal contents, as we predicted. So, that is why we put stated in the description of an
omen-sentence.

Furthermore, we say stated because omen can only report statements, that is, utterances of
declarative sentences, whatever their illocutionary point (assertive, commissive, or expressive).43
In contrast, omen-utterances always have the assertive illocutionary point and, thus, they cannot
be utterances of interrogative,44 exclamative, or imperative sentences.45 In this way, using stated
instead of said, as we argued in section 1, we exclude other kinds of sentences, and we are left
with only declarative ones. In speech act-theoretic terms, we could sketch the analysis of an
omen-utterance with propositional content pomen, as follows:

- Direction of fit: words-to-world.

 46

- Sincerity conditions: the speaker believes that p was stated by someone other than
herself.
- Conditions of satisfaction: the speech act is satisfied if and only if its propositional
content (pomen) is true, that is to say, p was stated by someone other than the speaker herself.

So, we can put things even a little bit more precisely, and say that uomen asserts that p was
stated by someone other than the speaker. This is the context-invariant meaning of an omen-
sentence, the type of content that all omen-utterances share.

5.3. THE CONTENTS OF OMEN-UTTERANCES. Let us say it again. Given a sentence S, the
proposition p expressed by an utterance of S, and an utterance uomen reporting p, the meaning of
an omen-sentence (M-Somen) can be rendered as

(M-Somen) p WAS STATED BY SOMEONE OTHER THAN THE SPEAKER OF uomen.

This is the MINIMAL SEMANTIC CONTENT of any utterance of any omen-sentence. It reads
‘someone other than the speaker of uomen’, alluding to the original speaker. In fact, omen admits
any option between a fully determinate or specific original speaker and a fully indeterminate or
non-specific one. That is to say, omen-sentences, out of context, are silent as far as the
determination of the original speaker is concerned. This is one of the features distinguishing
omen from esan ‘to say’. Let us take the following two examples, 45 with the verb esan and 46
with the particle omen.

(45) Esan d-u bihar eguraldi on-a

say.PFV 3SG.ABS.PRS-have tomorrow weather good-DET.SG.ABS
egin-go d-u-ela.
do-PROSP 3SG.ABS.PRS-have-COMP
‘(S)he has said that there will be good weather tomorrow.’

(46) Eguraldi on-a egin-go omen d-u

 47

weather good-DET.SG.ABS do-PROSP REP 3SG.ABS.PRS-have

bihar.
tomorrow
‘It is said that there will be good weather tomorrow.’

The syntactic structure of 45 contains a silent third-person singular pronoun pro required
by the verb esan, which corresponds to the original speaker, and its reference has to be fixed to
determine what we called the explicit referential content of the esan-utterance.46 So, in the case
of esan, we have the full range of grammatical persons articulated in the sentence as a noun
phrase.

Omen, in contrast, does not subcategorize any noun phrase for the role of the speaker of
the reported utterance. So, we do not have to determine the original speaker to obtain the explicit
referential content of the omen-utterance. In this sense, the original speaker can remain
indeterminate. However, the explicit referential content can be ENRICHED, providing a specific
source for the reported utterance, excluding the speaker herself (see Zubeldia 2013 for further
details).

This fact about omen can be described by distinguishing between various contents of the
utterance (reflexive or utterance-bound, explicit referential, and enriched referential contents, at
least), as we saw in subsection 1.2, instead of just talking about THE content (in the singular) of
the utterance. We follow Korta (2007) and Korta and Perry (2007a, 2011a) in leaving aside
MONOPROPOSITIONALISM; that is, the idea that the utterance of a sentence is associated with one
and only one content.

To repeat, omen does not subcategorize any noun phrase corresponding to the original
speaker in the sentence. However, the original speaker can be determined by exploiting
contextual knowledge and recognizing the speaker’s communicative intentions, that is, by a
pragmatic process known as enrichment of the content (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995).
 48

So, when the meaning of an omen-sentence (that is, its context-invariant meaning)
interacts with context, we get a variety of truth-conditions, depending on the original speaker’s
status.

Given that the speaker of a certain omen-utterance is X, we get that

(47) p WAS STATED BY SOMEONE OTHER THAN X.

Then, context can clarify whether X has some particular source in mind, or she is just thinking
about an indeterminate source. If the latter, you have something like

(48) THEY STATED THAT p,

with an impersonal they (or, it is said). If the former, you would have something like

(49) Y STATED THAT p,

where Y can be an individual person or a group of people.47

6. CONCLUSIONS. In this paper we addressed two of the most important issues debated in the
literature on evidentiality: (i) whether the evidential content of evidential elements scopes within
operators or not and (ii) whether the evidential content itself can be the target of a challenge or
assent/dissent. We argued, based on the semantic and pragmatic behavior of the Basque particle
omen, that the evidential content of evidential elements falls within the scope of certain operators,
and that the evidential content can be dissented with, as can be the reported content. Based on
these facts, we contended that omen is best analyzed as contributing to the propositional contents
of the utterance, and is not an illocutionary force indicator, nor does it generate a presupposition.
The current speaker and the original speaker express different propositions: pomen and p,
respectively.
 49

Moreover, we argued that the ingredient of uncertainty many grammarians and

lexicographers attribute to omen is not part of the meaning of an omen-sentence, nor part of what
is stated by an omen-utterance, but a GCI that can be generated by such an utterance.

To conclude, we contend that our proposal contributes to the studies on evidentiality,

giving further evidence for two of the main issues under debate. And, at the same time, it
contributes to scientific studies of Basque. It gives a theoretical base for a revised view on omen,
grounding it on some of the main theories and concepts of semantics and pragmatics: Grice’s
(1967a/1989, 1967b/1989) theory of conversation, Searle’s (1969) speech act theory and Korta
and Perry’s (2007a, 2011a, 2013) critical pragmatics. Our account includes a clear-cut distinction
between semantic meaning and pragmatic contents, and combines several methodological tools:
speakers’ intuition, corpora, and experiments.

But, of course, there remains much more work to be done. First of all, some issues are still
unsolved. To start with, we considered uncertainty to be a GCI. But we suggested that it can also
be an enriched content, part of the explicature, as relevance theorists would put it. The relation
between these two categories needs to be analyzed more, in order to clarify the nature of
uncertainty, and some other linguistic phenomena like scalar implicatures or conjunctions, for
instance.

Second, we should study the Eastern use of omen, as well as some other elements that
appear in the verbal complex, especially the particles ei ‘it is said’, bide ‘apparently’, ‘probably’,
ote ‘maybe’, and al (question particle). We take that ei and bide contribute, as omen does, to the
propositional contents of the utterance, whereas ote and al are illocutionary indicators (for
interrogatives). The study of these particles should be complemented with research on other kinds
of means to express evidentiality and modality in Basque.

7. APPENDIX. Condition 2, 3, and 4 of the sample scenario presented in subsection 4.2 (the
additional sentences are highlighted).
 50

Condition 2

Baita zera ere! Urdin-urdin

zegoen-eta orain dela gutxi.
Xabier eta Maialen lanean ari dira fakultatean, Xabierren Gelditu gabe
bulegoan, eta ez dute ikusten zer eguraldi dagoen, ari omen du euria.
bulegoak ez baitu kanpora ematen duen leihorik.

Maialen nekatuta dago jada, eta kalera joan nahi du.

Xabierrek, berriz, lana bukatu nahiko luke. Tratua
proposatu dio Maialeni: eguraldi ona badago, bere horretan
utziko dute lana; euria ari badu, berriz, lanean segituko
dute.

Maialen komuneko buelta egin berria da, eta ikusi du

primerako eguraldia dagoela. Telefonoz deitu diote
Xabierri. Elkarrizketa bukatuta telefonoa eskegi du.
!!"#$%#&'%()"*$)+%)&$,+%+-"*"*$"#+*()&*+$"./"#+$0/##"(+*1$
!
! ! ! !2 $$$$$$$$$3$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$4 $ $$$5 $$$$$$$$$$$6 !!
!"#"$% "#$%&!'('!')!$#&(*&((+& !,--------,--------,--------,--------, !.(&/&0!$#&(*&((+&! !!!!!!! !!

FIGURE 4

English translation:

Slide 1. Xabier and Maialen are working at the faculty, at Xabier’s office, and they cannot see
what the weather is like, since the office does not have any window.

Maialen is already tired, and wants to go out, whereas Xabier would like to finish their work. He
proposes a deal to Maialen: if it is good weather, they will stop working, whereas if it is raining,
they will go on working.

Maialen has just come back from the toilet, and has seen that the weather is wonderful.
Xabier has a phone call. After he finishes his conversation, he hangs up.

Slide 2.
- Xabier: It is raining [omen] a lot. (It is stated that it is raining a lot)
- Maialen: No way! As it was very clear some minutes ago.

What do you think about Maialen’s answer in this context?

1 2 3 4 5
 51

|––––––––|––––––––|––––––––|––––––––|
Not acceptable at all Totally acceptable

Condition 3

Bai, zera! Ez dizute

esan halakorik,
Xabier eta Maialen lanean ari dira fakultatean, Xabierren Esan dit gelditu gabe asmatu egin duzu
ari duela euria. lanean jarraitzeko.
bulegoan, eta ez dute ikusten zer eguraldi dagoen,
bulegoak ez baitu kanpora ematen duen leihorik.

Maialen nekatuta dago jada, eta kalera joan nahi du.

Xabierrek, berriz, lana bukatu nahiko luke. Tratua
proposatu dio Maialeni: eguraldi ona badago, bere horretan
utziko dute lana; euria ari badu, berriz, lanean segituko
dute.

Telefonoz deitu diote Xabierri. Elkarrizketa bukatuta

telefonoa eskegi du. Maialenek elkarrizketa guztia entzun
du, Xabierrek oso altu baitauka telefonoaren bolumena.
!!"#$%#&'%()"*$)+%)&$,+%+-"*"*$"#+*()&*+$"./"#+$0/##"(+*1$
Iluntzeko planari buruz aritu dira hizketan. !
! ! ! !2 $$$$$$$$$3$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$4 $ $$$5 $$$$$$$$$$$6 !!
!"#$%& "#$%&!'('!')!$#&(*&((+& !,--------,--------,--------,--------, !.(&/&0!$#&(*&((+&! !!!!!!! !!

FIGURE 5

English translation:

Slide 1. Xabier and Maialen are working at the faculty, at Xabier’s office, and they cannot see
what the weather is like, since the office does not have any window.

Maialen is already tired, and wants to go out, whereas Xabier would like to finish their work. He
proposes a deal to Maialen: if it is good weather, they will stop working, whereas if it is raining,
they will go on working.

Xabier has a phone call. After he finishes his conversation, he hangs up. Maialen hears all the
conversation, as the volume on Xabier’s phone is very loud. The conversation was about the
plan for the evening.

Slide 2.
- Xabier: (S)he has told me that it is raining a lot.
- Maialen: No way! They didn’t tell you that, you’ve made it up to go on working.
 52

What do you think about Maialen’s answer in this context?

1 2 3 4 5
|––––––––|––––––––|––––––––|––––––––|
Not acceptable at all Totally acceptable

Condition 4

Baita zera ere! Urdin-urdin

zegoen-eta orain dela gutxi.
Xabier eta Maialen lanean ari dira fakultatean, Xabierren Esan dit gelditu gabe
ari duela euria.
bulegoan, eta ez dute ikusten zer eguraldi dagoen,
bulegoak ez baitu kanpora ematen duen leihorik.

Maialen nekatuta dago jada, eta kalera joan nahi du.

Xabierrek, berriz, lana bukatu nahiko luke. Tratua
proposatu dio Maialeni: eguraldi ona badago, bere horretan
utziko dute lana; euria ari badu, berriz, lanean segituko
dute.

Maialen komuneko buelta egin berria da, eta ikusi du

primerako eguraldia dagoela. Telefonoz deitu diote
Xabierri. Elkarrizketa bukatuta telefonoa eskegi du.
!!"#$%#&'%()"*$)+%)&$,+%+-"*"*$"#+*()&*+$"./"#+$0/##"(+*1$
!
! ! ! !2 $$$$$$$$$3$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$4 $ $$$5 $$$$$$$$$$$6 !!
!"#$%& "#$%&!'('!')!$#&(*&((+& !,--------,--------,--------,--------, !.(&/&0!$#&(*&((+&! !!!!!!! !!

FIGURE 6

English translation:

Slide 1. Xabier and Maialen are working at the faculty, at Xabier’s office, and they cannot see
what the weather is like, since the office does not have any window.

Maialen is already tired, and wants to go out, whereas Xabier would like to finish their work. He
proposes a deal to Maialen: if it is good weather, they will stop working, whereas if it is raining,
they will go on working.

Maialen has just come back from the toilet, and has seen that the weather is wonderful.
Xabier has a phone call. After he finishes his conversation, he hangs up.
 53

Slide 2.
- Xabier: (S)he has told me that it is raining a lot.
- Maialen: No way! As it was very clear some minutes ago.

What do you think about Maialen’s answer in this context?

1 2 3 4 5
|––––––––|––––––––|––––––––|––––––––|
Not acceptable at all Totally acceptable
 54

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 63

NOTES
1
There is no good, or even approximate translation for this particle.
2
When we refer to pragmatics, we are referring to linguistic pragmatics; as such, any aspect of
pragmatics related to sociolinguistics or socio-cultural anthropology falls outside the scope of our
research (see Korta 2001 and Korta & Perry 2011b).
3
We will use speaker meaning speaker, writer, narrator…; the author of the utterance, in general,
the person who utters a sentence orally or in writing.
4
For the sake of simplicity, we are leaving aside issues having to do with tense and time.
5
We take propositions to be abstract entities to classify the truth-conditions of utterances and
thoughts; and not, for example, mental representations built out of expressions in the language of
thought (Fodor 1975) or worldly objects, properties, and relations. We do not adopt a particular
formal version of propositions either (e.g. such as sets of possible worlds or structured
propositions). As far as we can tell, nothing substantial derives from this for our present
purposes. We are only interested in emphasizing that propositions do not stand for meanings,
they are independent from a particular language (even if we use English), and are distinct from
both sentences and utterances. That is why we use small capital letters to represent them.
6
So, as far as omen is concerned, we also distinguish between the meaning of an omen-sentence,
on the one hand, and the contents of an omen-utterance and the contribution(s) omen makes to
them, on the other hand. As a particle, omen does not have any intrinsic meaning outside of a
sentence. It is a syncategorematic term, to use the words of medieval logicians; that is to say, it
has no meaning on its own, it gets its meaning when combined with categorematic or meaningful
terms. That is why we say the meaning of an omen-sentence and not the meaning of omen; and,
in the same way, the contents of an omen-utterance, instead of the contents of omen.
7
Korta and Perry (2007b) call this the MINIMAL SEMANTIC CONTENT of the utterance, since it is
the minimal content determined by the meaning of the sentence uttered plus the fact that the
utterance has been produced.
8
The token-reflexive theory of indexicals like I is due to Hans Reichenbach (1947), and is so
called because the meaning of indexicals is relative to tokens of them, and reference to each
token is included in their meaning. See also Perry 2012.
 64

9
The scare quotes around ‘test’ are due to the fact that Grice himself acknowledged that such
features as cancellability and non-detachability do not constitute ‘a knock-down test’, though
they provide ‘a more or less strong prima facie case in favor of the presence of a conversational
implicature’ (Grice 1967b/1989:43). Some people (e.g. Carston (2002) and Recanati (2004))
claim that all pragmatic content is cancellable. If that were so, the cancellability test would fail as
a distinguishing criterion between what is said and what is implicated. However, we think that
cancellability, understood as ELIMINABILITY, should be distinguished from REVISABILITY (see
Korta 1997; Burton-Roberts (2005, 2006-2007) makes a similar claim). The former is what we
think Grice (1967a/1989, 1967b/1989) has in mind when talking about the cancellability of
implicatures. A putative implicature is cancelled, that is, it is not there any more; it is eliminated,
either explicitly or contextually, period. In contrast, a putative reference assignment (of, say, an
indexical or a demonstrative) can be revised; it can be cancelled but a substitute is required.
Hence, reference assignment is REVISABLE but not ELIMINABLE. That is why, within the category
of literal truth-conditions, we distinguish between EXPLICIT truth-conditions that only include
ARTICULATED constituents of the propositions expressed, on the one hand, and ENRICHED truth-
conditions that may include UNARTICULATED constituents that result from (optional) enrichment
processes, as we noted in the previous subsection.
10
Notice that we should not confuse declarative sentence and declarative speech act. We prefer
to keep these terms (one used in grammar and the other one in speech act theory), to be faithful to
the original terms.
11
See Searle 1969 and Searle & Vanderveken 1985. We are leaving aside directives, which
involve interrogative and imperative sentences.
12
It is this canonical use that all Basque dialects share. That is why we restrict our analysis to this
shared and standard use, to start with. We are aware, however, that Eastern dialects are more
flexible in the syntactic realization of omen, and they have some other uses in addition to the
general one (see Etxepare 2010), which would have to be analyzed in order to have a more
complete picture of the particle omen.
13
This example and the next one are taken from Laka 1996. We used this work, along with the
work of Hualde & Ortiz de Urbina (2003) to sum up the information concerning the distinction
between periphrastic and synthetic verbs.
 65

14
Abbreviations used: 1 = first person, 2 = second person, 3 = third person, ABS = absolutive, ADL
= adlative, COMP = complementizer, DAT = dative, DET = determiner, ERG = ergative, GEN =
genitive, INDF = indefinite, INS = instrumental, IPFV = imperfective, LOC = locative, NR =
nominalizer, PFV = perfective, PL = plural, PROG = progressive, PROSP = prospective, PRS =
present, PRTV = partitive, PST = past, PTCP = participle, Q = question particle, REP = reportative, SG
= singular, SOC = sociative.
15
The glosses can be made more precise, adding zero morphemes for morphological slots left
empty; for example, for the third person singular, in this case,
ø-d-aki-zu
3SG.ABS-PRS-know-2SG.ERG
However, we opted for simplicity in this work, thinking it sufficient for our purposes, and we will
treat the prefixes in the third person that appear in this work (d- and z-) as agreement markers.
We would like to thank a reviewer of a previous draft of this work for this remark about the
glosses.
16
In translating omen-sentences, omen can be rendered as ‘it is said that …’. As far as we can
tell, everybody accepts that it means at least that. Discrepancies begin when trying to specify how
that should be interpreted, or whether there is anything else to its meaning. But to be coherent
with our terminology distinctions in section 1, and for reasons that will become apparent in
subsection 5.2 below, when we discuss what an omen-utterance can report, we use ‘it is stated
that ...’ instead.
17
Note that in the case of negative sentences with periphrastic verbs, when the auxiliary verb
moves to a position before the main verb, other constituents may appear between the auxiliary
and the main verb.
18
‘Partícula con la que se da a entender que la información que se expresa proviene de otras
personas o fuentes.’ (Mitxelena 1987:244). Our translation.
19
‘Hiztunak aditzera ematen duenaren berri entzunez (ez ikusiz) jakin duela adierazteko
erabiltzen duen partikula.’ (Sarasola 1996:614) Our translation. This is not exactly the same as
claiming that the proposition must have been conveyed by someone other than the speaker; there
are evidentials that require only auditory evidence, and they are not reportative. Nevertheless, we
take Sarasola here to be emphasizing the contrast between someone else’s oral or written speech
and direct epistemic contact with the facts represented by the reported proposition. Sarasola
 66

confirmed this to us in personal communication. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising the
issue.
20
See, for example, Larramendi 1854:196, van Eys 1873:301, Campion 1884, Lafitte 1962:162
(page numbers from the 1979 edition), López Mendizabal 1943, Arotçarena 1951, Trask 1981,
Wilbur 1981, Agirre 1991, King 1993, Zubiri & Zubiri 1995, HABE (Egaña et al. 2001),
Jendraschek 2003, and de Rijk 2008.
21
‘Ei eta omen. Partikula hauen modaltasunak bata bestearekin loturiko bi alderdi ditu: a) esaten
dena besteri entzuna dela adierazten dute batetik eta b) egia denentz ezin duela hiztunak erabat
ziurtatu.’ (Euskaltzaindia 1987:515). Our translation.
22
‘Sincerity conditions. Whenever one performs an illocutionary act with a propositional content
one expresses a certain psychological state with that same content. Thus when one makes a
statement one expresses a belief, when one makes a promise one expresses an intention, when
one issues a command one expresses a desire or (Searle & Vanderveken 1985:18).
23
It has to be noted, however, that in a later work (Faller 2007:240) she seems to fix up the lack
of appropriate sincerity conditions, and proposes the following formulation for capturing the
meaning of -si, with an evidential sincerity condition.

REP(α) > BS(α)(∃S3[Done(SayS3(β)) ∧ β → α])

This formulation does contain an appropriate sort of sincerity condition: namely, a mental state B
(believe). This captures the speaker’s evidential commitment that she believes that some speaker
S3 at some point said β, and we think it is right. However, Faller points to a problem with this
formulation; namely, that it licenses the inference that the speaker believes the content of p. We
do not wholly understand this, but the discussion of the SDRT analysis of -si presented in Faller
2007 lies outside the scope of the present paper. Later, Faller (2007:243-244, 2012:295-296) uses
PUT (making reference to the speech act of putting forward a proposition into the discourse). We
would have the same problems with this illocutionary force as with present, as she says it has an
empty set of sincerity conditions. See, for example, von Fintel 2003, Portner 2006, and Chung
2011 for related proposals.
24
Instead of taking it as an illocutionary force indicator, the evidential can be analyzed as a
modal element that triggers a presupposition (see section 4.3 below). Anyhow, as far as we know,
 67

for the purposes of this test, all authors leave aside the possibility that evidentials can encode
both (part of) the propositional content and illocutionary force.
25
There would be a third option, as well, that is, that p (that it is raining) is possibly or
necessarily true, given what someone else said. That is what the modal analysis of evidentials
(see, for instance, Izvorski 1997 and Matthewson et al. 2007) would predict. However, we have
not considered this option, because in the case of omen-utterances, the speaker does not assert
that p is possibly or necessarily true, given that (see example 36 below) she can be totally certain
about the falsity of the reported content (see, as well, Faller 2011:678-680 for the case of the
Cuzco Quechua reportative -si). See also subsection 4.3. We would like to thank a referee of a
previous draft of this paper for pointing out this issue.
26
This is shown by cross-linguistic data. Reportedly, most often when an evidential utterance is
challenged/accepted/rejected the target is the reported content and not the evidential content. See,
among others, Faller 2002, Matthewson et al. 2007, Murray 2010, Matthewson 2013.
27
It looks like omen is an exception passing the assent/dissent test. Other exceptions are the
evidentials in Nuu-chah-nulth. Waldie and colleagues (2009) say that with evidentials in Nuu-
chah-nulth it seems possible to disagree with the evidence type of the evidential element, but that
more research is needed to have clearer results.
28
It has to be acknowledged that some people have doubts about the validity of the assent/dissent
test (see, among others, Koontz-Garboden 2010 and Murray 2010).
29
Some authors call it the embedding test (see, for example, Faller 2002 and Schenner 2008a).
However, we will keep the term embedding to refer to syntactic embedding, and call this test the
scope test (Papafragou (2006:1690) calls it scope diagnostic as well). In fact, that is what is
analyzed by means of this test, whether an element is within the scope of an operator or not. So,
we will say that an element is within the scope of an operator (or that it has narrow scope within
it), instead of saying that it is semantically embedded (see e.g. Matthewson et al. 2007:228 and
Waldie et al. 2009:4). In fact, when we say that an element is semantically embedded, we are
talking about the scope of the element in the utterance, and as utterances express propositions, we
think this fact gathers more than semantics.
30
According to Asher (2000), Wilson (1975) understands the criterion in its strong version, that
is, strengthening the conditional so that the reverse would also hold: if an expression contributes
to the propositional content, then it will appear within the scope of a logical operator:
 68

According to Wilson (1975), there is a test for non truth conditional meaning: embed the
questionable item into the antecedent of a conditional and see if the purported truth
conditional contributor’s meaning falls within the scope of ‘if’. If it does, it is truth
conditional; and if not, not. (Asher 2000:32)
However, Asher himself, as well as Faller 2002 and Matthewson (2013), for example, dismiss the
strong reading and follow the weak one, and so do we. We think there are several reasons to do
so. Recanati (1989:325) has doubts about the strong interpretation, as he says ‘if –AND, PERHAPS,
ONLY IF– it falls within the scope of a logical operator’ (our highlighting).
31
Roughly, omen patterns with some other evidential elements regarding scope. For example,
Japanese evidentials get narrow scope within external negation and the antecedent of the
conditional (McCready & Ogata 2007:167-171, McCready 2008). Likewise, the evidentials ku7,
k’a and -an’ in St’át’imcets get narrow scope within attitude verbs and the verb say (Matthewson
et al. 2007:227-231) and lákw7a within the verb say and possibly inside the antecedent of the
conditional (Matthewson 2013:14-17). German sollen takes narrow scope within the antecedent
of the conditional (Schenner 2009), and also within complement clauses (Schenner 2008a,
2008b), in the same way as evidentials in Bulgarian (Sauerland & Schenner 2007) and Tibetan
(Garrett 2001). In addition, Gitksan evidentials =ima and =kat appear under the scope of a verb
of saying (Peterson 2010). Finally, Greek taha gets narrow scope within the antecedent of the
conditional (Ifantidou 2001:176-180).
32
Etxepare (2010:109) holds that this kind of utterance would be acceptable in Eastern dialects,
but not in the central ones (where omen has a canonical use). He gives the following examples.
Jonek petrikilo titulua lortu omen du, #baina ez du lortu. (‘It is stated that Jon has
obtained the folk healer certificate, #but he has not obtained it.’)
Jonek ez omen du petrikilo titulua lortu, #baina lortu du. (‘It is stated that Jon has not
obtained the folk healer certificate, #but he has obtained it.’)
We disagree. We think that both are totally acceptable in Central dialects (our own). Anyway,
these examples only show that the raining event is not being asserted by the speaker. The relevant
data is the contradictory nature of 30.
33
As we shall see in subsection 5.2, this should be qualified. The reported utterance is a
statement, but the omen-utterance is an assertion.
 69

34
Note that there are several tests for modality proposed in the literature (see e.g. Faller 2002,
2003, 2006; Papafragou 2006; Matthewson et al. 2007; Waldie et al. 2009; Murray 2010;
Peterson 2010; Tonhauser 2011, and Matthewson 2013). Moreover, Kratzer’s proposal of
distinguishing between two possible kinds of conversational backgrounds of epistemic modals —
realistic and informational— should also be considered (see e.g. Kratzer 2012, Matthewson 2013
and Faller 2011), as well as the phenomenon of modal subordination (see, among others, Roberts
1989 and Faller 2012b). We will leave this discussion for further work.
35
We used an oral corpus, from data collected by the recordings made by the second author along
with her colleague Asier Aizpurua, in 2001, and the written corpus from the database Ereduzko
prosa gaur of The Basque Institute of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
(http://www.ehu.es/euskara-orria/euskara/ereduzkoa/), as well as the newspaper library of Berria
(http://hemeroteka.berria.info and Ereduzko prosa gaur) and its social network
(http://berriketan.info).
36
Emen is a dialectal variant of omen, used in some subdialects of the Central dialect. And often
the particle and the predicate create a single element phonetically.
37
Omen is not an exception in that. For example, Faller (2002) draws the same conclusion for the
reportative enclitic -si in Cuzco Quechua and so do McCready and Ogata (2007) for the Japanese
hearsay evidential soo-da, Murray (2010) for the Cheyenne reportative and Matthewson (2013)
for the evidential lákw7a in St’át’imcets; whereas Matthewson and colleagues (2007), for
instance, conclude the opposite when analyzing modal evidentials (k’a, an’ and ku7) in
St’át’imcets, as well as Peterson (2010) when analyzing the inferential evidential =ima and the
reportative =kat in Gitksan.
38
Grice himself does not say it explicitly, as far as we know, but it can or must be inferred from
how he presents his ideas on the distinction between different kinds of implicatures and their
features (Grice 1967a/1989:26-27, 39; 1967b/1989). We would like to thank Robyn Carston for
this remark.
39
There are, as is often the case, alternative glosses of this GCI. You can consider why the
speaker chooses to report p and not assert it, going against what the first maxim of quantity
requires, namely, because she is not certain about the informatively stronger option. This would
be an explanation fitting more closely the account for believe and or. See, however, Faller 2002
for a proposal of a scale of evidential types for Cuzco Quechua. She proposes to base it on a new
 70

submaxim of quality, instead of on the maxim of quantity: a speaker using an evidential lower in
the scale implicates that she could not have used one higher up. See, as well, Faller 2012a for a
proposal of evidential scalar implicature, based on the notion of evidential strength.
40
We know that we have drawn a controversial conclusion, taking into account how polemical
the concept of GCI is. Even though some neo-Gricean pragmaticians have developed Grice’s
concept and have made proposals (see, among others, Horn 1984, Levinson 2000, and Chierchia
2004), others, mainly the relevantists (for instance, Carston 1998, 2002), have questioned it. This
is not the place to address the debate. However, let us note that we agree with both parties that,
though part of the pragmatic content of the utterance, GCIs are not PARTICULARIZED
conversational implicatures, and they are not EXPLICIT or ARTICULATED elements of utterance
content. As far as, beyond terminological disputes, they involve different hypotheses about
utterance comprehension processes, we remain agnostic here.
41
Originally there were twenty-six scenarios; however, two of them were left aside, as they were
cases of GCIs. All the other implicatures were cases of PCIs.
42
Literal translation: You are the sugar cube in my heart.
43
We will not go into details in this work, but it seems clear that omen can report utterances with
assertive, commissive or expressive illocutionary points, but not with directive ones. We have
doubts about speech acts with a declarative point, also called PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCES (e.g.
Ontzi hau Elisabet Erregina izendatzen dut [= ‘I name this ship The Queen Elizabeth’]). It seems
to us that they cannot be correctly reported by means of omen. Omen reports speech, not the
illocutionary act performed. An omen-utterance reporting a performative utterance (Ontzi hau
Elisabet Erregina izendatzen omen du, [= ‘It is stated that she names this ship The Queen
Elizabeth’]) would normally be taken as reporting the utterance’s assertive reading, not the
performative one.
44
We are aware that, allegedly, there are languages where evidentials can appear in questions,
contrary to the general view that evidentials appear in statements. It seems that there is an
interpretation that many questions containing evidentials share cross-linguistically; namely, the
reading where the hearer is asked to base his response in reportative evidence. In this
interpretation, the evidential is not anchored to the speaker any more, but is instead anchored to
the addressee. This phenomenon is called interrogative flip (see, for example, Garrett 2001,
Faller 2002, and Tenny & Speas 2004). We will not address the issue of evidentials appearing in
 71

interrogatives in this work, but we would like to make just a remark concerning omen and
questions. We should note that, although omen cannot appear in questions in general, it seems to
us that it can appear in echo questions (Ginzburg & Sag 2000), where the speaker echoes another
statement. For example,

(i) Nor-ekin ari omen nintzen dantza-n?

who-SOC PROG REP 1SG.ABS.PST.be dance.DET.SG-LOC
‘Who is it stated that I was dancing with?’

(ii) Noiz egin omen z-u-en euri-a?

when do.PFV REP 3SG.ERG.PST-have-PST rain-DET.SG.ABS
‘When is it stated that it rained?’

We did not come across any other example that sounded natural without involving the echo to a
previous statement.
45
The fact that omen occurs in declarative sentences but never in imperative, interrogative or
exclamative sentences seems to have its roots in syntax, whereas the fact that omen-utterances
have the assertive illocutionary point and never the commissive or the expressive point seems to
be pragmatic. According to speech act theory, the commissive illocutionary point consists in the
speaker committing herself to perform the action represented by the propositional content of the
utterance; the expressive illocutionary point consists in the speaker expressing a mental state
about the state of affairs represented by the propositional content of the utterance. By reporting
the statement of someone else, the speaker can never (literally and directly) achieve those points
(see Searle 1979 and Korta & Perry 2011b, among others).
46
The so-called impersonal use would be an exception. In Basque, the impersonal consists in not
assigning a reference to the third-person plural pronoun. To be sure, there is the possibility of the
mediopassive use in Basque as well, esan da ‘it has been said’ (with third singular auxiliary form
of the verb to be, instead of the third singular/plural of to have in esan du(te)), but we do not find
it very common. We thank a referee for this remark.
47
For a systematic theory of utterance-contents see Perry 2012 and Korta & Perry 2011a, 2013.