Introducing Reported Speeches in Balochi of Sistan with ki

The Balochi conjunction of general subordination, ki, sometimes introduces complement clauses that report speeches. Barjasteh Delforooz (2010a: 224) suggested that, when so used, ki "has a highlighting function ... The marked speeches push the story forward to its goal." The current paper argues that, in fact, ki highlights not the speech itself, but its consequences. When ki precedes a reported question, for example, the answer is more important than the question. The presence of ki may also indicate that the words in a speech were not said on a particular occasion, but represent the substance of what someone else said or used to say, is to say or could have said. In other words, ki is a "linguistic indicator of interpretive use" (Blass 1990: 104; Farrell 2005: 1). The paper ends by discussing how the above motivations for using ki before a reported speech in Balochi can be reconciled.