Armenian Speech Reports: Blurring the Quotative Line

Modern Eastern Armenian has two complementizers, vor and te. When used to introduce speech reports, those complementizers differ as to the discourse status of the speech event they introduce; most notably, te possesses an evidential meaning that vor lacks. Using the model of discourse update suggested in Portner (2006), I provide an analysis of te that explains its evidential properties. I also provide evidence that MEA thwarts the traditional dichotomy assumed in the literature between direct and indirect speech by allowing a form of loose quotation.