إِنَّمَا طَلَبْتُ مُقَارَنَةَ النُّسَخِ.
I asked only for the copies to be compared.
The listener thought the researcher had ordered an immediate declaration of authorship. In this reply, innamā foregrounds requesting comparison and rejects the salient alternative, declaring proof. The speaker remains the requester, but the focus is the limited nature of the requested action.
If the issue were who asked for the comparison, a different communicative focus would arise. Naming the particle alone is not enough; one must identify the specific alternatives in contention and the restricted proposition.