This paper is about three particles recognized as complementizers or subordinators by Givon and Kimenyi, (1974). In their paper, Givon and Kimenyi have provided an analysis on how  -ti, ngo and ko are used and how utterances embedded under them are to be interpreted. They considered -ti as simply reporting verbatim and ngo and ko as ‘used only in indirect-quote complements’ (Givon and Kimenyi 1974: 96). I would say that this claim is too restrictive and does not take care of all possible interpretations of utterances marked by these particles.  
In this paper I would like to look at the different uses of ko, ngo, -ti, in Kinyarwanda from a relevance theoretic point of view. Following Blass (1989 and 1990), and Itani (1998). I will show that these particles are what she called ‘interpretive markers’. Though they are all used for metarepresentation, echoic use and reportative, each one has some particular uses which the others do not cover. Therefore they have three different constraining functions. Further interpretations are due to processing in particular contexts in accordance with the principle of relevance. The particular constraining functions that each one has could be stated as follows:

• -ti is a metalinguistic marker, marking same speech and same thought.

• ngo is mainly an echo use marker, usually accompanied with some attitude. It marks not only echoic utterances but also sounds, such as onomatopoeia. It has the widest variety of uses.

• Ko is basically an interpretive use marker covering speech acts and propositional attitude. It covers also such constructions as  it is necessary, it is true, which are non-attributive. Because of this it is a metarepresentation marker with wider than attributive use. It is the one which has usually the higher level explicature made explicit.