It is argued that a full account of the linguistic facts of 'aval' and 'ela' requires a broad definition of 'utterance meaning' including both semantic and pragmatic notions. The meaning of an utterance is said to consist of hierarchically ordered layers of meaning, from an inner 'core' of propositional content to an outer 'shell' of conversational implicatures, via such layers as modality, illocutionary force, felicity conditions, etc.