Underspecification of ‘meaning’: the case of Russian imperfective  
aspect 
Barbara Sonnenhauser 
University of Leipzig 
Beethovenstr. 15 
04107 Leipzig, Germany 
basonne@rz.uni-leizpig.de 
 
 
Abstract 
One main problem for NLP applications 
is that natural language expressions are 
underspecified and require enrichments 
of different sorts to get a truth-
conditional interpretaton in context. Un-
derspecification applies on two levels: 
what is said underdetermines what is 
meant, and linguistic meaning under-
specifies what is said. One instance of 
this phenomenon is aspect in Russian, 
especially the imperfective one. It gives 
rise to a variety of readings, which are 
difficult to capture by one invariant 
meaning. Instead, the imperfective aspect 
is sense-general; its meaning has to be 
specified in the course of interpretation 
by contextual cues and pragmatic infer-
ences. This paper advocates an account 
of the different imperfective readings in 
terms of pragmatic principles and infer-
ential heuristics based on, and supplied 
by, a semantic skeleton consisting of a 
‘selectional theory’ of aspect. This 
framework might serve as basis for a 
rule-guided derivation of aspectual read-
ings in Russian. 
1 Linguistic underspecification 
Natural language expressions deliver merely 
templates for the construction of a contextually 
relevant interpretation, namely the propositional 
meaning the hearer ascribes to the respective 
perceived utterance. What is linguistically given 
delivers only part of the input necessary for in-
terpretation and has to be enriched and specified 
by recourse to sentence-level and discourse-level 
context, as well as to world-knowledge. Proposi-
tions, i.e. truth-conditional content, arise only 
after that enrichment process has taken place. 
NLP applications need to capture the meaning 
of a linguistic input to adequately work with it in 
the respective applications. But the ‘meaning’ 
relevant in this case, viz. the intended interpreta-
tion of an utterance, is underspecified by the 
lexically given input in at least two ways.  Lin-
guistic meaning underspecifies propositions, i.e. 
‘what is said’ (Carston, 2002), and ‘what is said’ 
in turn underspecifies ‘what is meant’ (Grice, 
1989). Both kinds of underspecification have to 
be solved by the hearer in natural discourse set-
tings, and by the corresonding algorithms in 
NLP-applications. As such applications necessar-
ily rely on linguistically given input, they have to 
be supplemented by a systematic account of the 
inferential mechanisms needed to enrich and 
specify the lexical schemes. A further difficulty 
for NLP applications is that, presuming some 
form of cooperativity, any utterance can be inter-
preted by appropriately accommodating the con-
text. 
Apparently, computing the contextually rele-
vant interpretation of an utterance requires more 
than capturing and computing lexical input. It 
relies crucially on further information and prin-
ciples of how to derive that information and 
combine it with what is lexically given. Informa-
tion – contextual or conceptual – that is not con-
tained in the natural language string currently 
being processed is subject to pragmatic actions 
(Perrett, 2000: 102). 
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 
illustrates the assumptions on pragmatic reason-
ing relevant here. Section 3 deals with Russian 
ipf aspect as one example of linguistic under-
specification and sketches the semantics and 
pragmatics involved in the derivation of its read-
ings. Implications for NLP will be given in sec-
tion 4, and section 5 offers a short conclusion. 
2 Pragmatic Reasoning 
The twofold underspecification of natural lan-
guage expressions is resolved by pragmatic rea-
soning: ‘implicatures’, derived by inference 
alone, enrich what is said to what is meant and 
‘explicatures’, derived by decoding plus infer-
ence, enrich the lexical input to what is said. 
Both interact in mutual parallel adjustment, in 
that the expectation of certain implicatures con-
strains the possible range of explicatures. Thus, 
we are dealing with two kinds of semantics – 
lexical and propositonal – and with two kinds of 
pragmatics – explicature and implicature (Car-
ston, 2002):  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Figure 1. Interaction of Semantics and Pragmatics 
The pragmatic actions can be captured by Le-
vinson’s (2000) heuristics, whose application 
gives rise to default interpretations by evoking 
certain inferences. The heuristics and their corre-
sponding inferences are based on Grice’s Max-
ims of Conversation: Q-heuristics are based on 
the first quantity maxim (‘make your statement 
as informative as possible’) and license inference 
to the negation or invalidity of a corresponding 
stronger expression, M-heuristics stem from vio-
lations of the manner maxim (esp. ‘avoid obscu-
rity of expression’ and ‘avoid prolixity’), and 
license the inference from marked expressions to 
marked interpretations. I-heuristics are based on 
the second quantity maxim (‘do not say more 
than necessary’) and allow for inference to a 
stereotype. Contrary to the Gricean view, how-
ever, these are assumed to work partly also on 
the subpropositional level giving rise to ‘explica-
tures’ (Carston, 2002), thereby enriching and 
constraining the underspecified lexical represen-
tation.  
An advantage of using heuristics giving rise to 
default interpretations is that they capture the fact 
that real minds have to make decisions under 
constraints of limited time and knowledge. In  
hand-ling tasks like interpretation, humans have 
to use approximate methods like heuristics that 
guide the search and determine when it should 
end, and simple decision rules that make use of 
the information found. To behave adaptively in 
the environment in general, and in interpreting 
utterances in special, humans must be able to 
make inferences that are fast, frugal and accurate 
(Gigerenzer et al., 1999). These inferences, or the 
heuristics they are based on, respectively, work 
well insofar as they make a tradeoff on the di-
mension of generality vs. specificity. Their sim-
plicity allows them to be robust when confronted 
with a change in environment and to generalize 
to new situations. Such heuristics are rather suit-
able  means for dealing with underspecified, 
sense-general linguistic expressions that equally 
make a tradeoff between underdetermination and 
preciseness. Furthermore, heuristics are of the 
kind NLP applications can deal with (section 4).  
Levinson’s heuristics, at least the M- and Q-
heuristics, are instances of such fast and frugal 
heuristics that give rise to default inferences 
which have to be made more specific in the 
course of interpretation. This is achieved by the 
rather specific I-heuristics, that give rise to infer-
ences by referring to assumptions provided by a 
concept being activated by a lexical item in a 
certain context and discourse setting. 
3 Ipf aspect in Russian 
One instance of underspecification is aspect in 
Russian, especially the ipf
1
, which gives rise to a 
considerable variety of readings (1a-g). Their 
context-dependence and defeasibility indicates 
their partial pragmatic character.  
1a. actual-processual reading 
 Šar medlenno podnimalsja.   
 balloon slowly ascend:PAST:ipf 
 ‘The balloon was ascending slowly.’ 
1b. inactual reading 
 Ran´še on rabotal v universitete.  
 in the past he work:PAST:ipf at university:LOC. 
 ‘He used to work as a teacher.’ 
1c. general-factual reading 
 Vot na ė toj stene visela kartina.  
 there at that wall:LOChang:PAST:ipf painting.                     
 ‘There was a painting hanging on that wall.’ 
1d. durative reading 
 Ona dolgo smotrela na fotografii.   
 she for a long time look:PAST:ipf at photographs:ACC  
 ‘She looked at the photos for a long time.’ 
1e. atemporal reading 
 Železo tonet v vode.   
 iron go down:PAST:ipf in water:LOC 
 ‘Iron goes down in water.’ 
                                                      
1
 ‘ipf’ = (Russian) imperfective aspect; ‘pf’ = (Russian) perfective aspect 
3 
2 
Logical form 
Proposition 
Implicature 
Sem 
Prag 
Truth-
cond. 
Explic.
Lexical
1
Implic. 
1f. potential reading 
Chorošij byl slesar´: ljubye zamki otkryval. 
good PAST locksmith:every lock:Pl open:PAST:ipf 
‘He was a good locksmith: he could open 
every door.’ 
1g. habitual reading 
Po subbotam, ona chodila v banju.   
on  saturday,  she go:PAST:ipf to sauna  
‘She used to go to the sauna on Saturdays.’ 
This variety makes it difficult to capture the 
semantics of ipf with one invariant meaning. 
Postulating polysemy does not solve the problem 
either, as this would presuppose the existence of 
a clearly defined number of discrete readings. 
This is indeed not the case, in view of the ongo-
ing debat about how many and which readings to 
postulate. Instead, ipf is best considered as an 
instance of ‘sense-generality’ (Atlas 1989), i.e. as 
having a definite, but highly general meaning 
that is specified in the course of interpretation by 
means of context and pragmatic inference. 
Sense-generality and pragmatic inference consti-
tute the semantic and pragmatic side of utterance 
interpretation: “[…] Grice’s pragmatics without 
sense-generality is blind, and sense-generality 
without Grice’s pragmatics is empty” (Atlas, 
1989: 149). 
Accordingly, this paper aims at explaining the 
derivation of ipf readings by a more pragmati-
cally oriented account, based on a ‘selectional 
theory’ of aspect (Bickel, 1996). 
3.1 Semantics 
As regards semantics, aspect is assumed to con-
tribute to the finite part of an utterance in select-
ing a certain part of the descriptive content of the 
verb and relating it to the time an assertion is 
made about, the topic time TT (Klein, 1995). The 
relation thus obtained constitutes the aspectual 
value. The decisive units for this selection are 
phases and boundaries (Bickel, 1996). Presuming 
a tripartite event structure (Moens and Steedman, 
1988) consisting of a preparation phase (dynamic 
phase ϕ
dyn
), a culmination point (boundary τ) and 
a consequent state (static phase ϕ
stat
), there are 
three possibilities for aspect to select. English 
and Turkish both have ϕ
dyn
-selecting aspectual 
markers, Turkish also a marker for explicit ϕ
stat
-
selection; Russian pf aspect explicitly selects τ. 
The unmarked members of the aspectual opposi-
tions may assert anything else – Russian ipf as-
pect may assert anything but the explicit 
selection of a boundary. 
As truth-evaluation and assertion have to be 
kept apart, the selected and asserted parts have to 
be related an interval of time, the validation in-
terval, where they are asserted to hold and truth-
conditionally evaluated. Padučeva (1996) refers 
to this interval with the notion of točka otsčeta 
(henceforth TO), an aspectual reference interval, 
which can be retrospective or synchronous 
(bounded or unbouded) with respect to the as-
serted part. TO is decisive for constraining the 
range of possible interpretations of ipf as it clas-
sifies the readings into three groups. In most 
cases TO is lexically given, predominantly by 
adverbials, and therefore constitutes an essential 
contextual feature for the derivation of the rele-
vant reading. Table 1 shows the classification of 
ipf readings according to TO
2
. The ‘relation’ 
constitutes the aspectual value: 
 
 TO Relation Reading of the ipf  
I. 
synchronous, 
bounded 
TT included in 
ϕ
dyn
actual-processual 
II. 
synchronous, 
non-bounded
TT simultane-
ous with    
(ϕ
dyn
 τ ϕ
stat
) 
habitual, inactual, 
potential, permanent, 
atemporal 
III. retrospective 
TT includes  
(ϕ
dyn
 τ ϕ
stat
) 
general-factual, dura-
tive 
Table 1. A classification of ipf readings 
What has been said so far provides the seman-
tic skeleton that has to be accompanied and 
fleshed out by pragmatic reasoning. Note, that 
pragmatics does not apply ‘after’ semantics, but 
rather interleaves with it. 
3.2 Pragmatics 
As already mentioned before, the principles as-
sumed to guide the pragmatic inferencing are the 
heuristics proposed by Levinson (2000), which 
are assumed to apply also at the subpropositional 
level giving rise to ‘explicatures’ (Carston, 2002) 
that enrich and constrain underspecified lexical 
representations to yield full-fledged propositions.  
Q-inferences are involved in deriving the 
meaning of unmarked forms by giving rise to 
scalar implicatures from the scale <pf, ipf>, 
meaning that if the speaker uses the weaker ele-
ment of the scale (ipf) the hearer is entiteled to 
infer the invalidity of the stronger expression 
(pf): Using the pf aspect explicitly marks the se-
lection of a boundary, using the ipf does not ex-
clude that selection and thus gives rise to the 
                                                      
2
 That it is indeed reasonable to distinguish these three groups is supported by 
a look at Turkish which has morphological means to express the respective 
relation (cf. Sonnenhauser, 2003). 
three possible values stated above in table 1. This 
pragmatically derived meaning of ipf is captured 
by the metavariable ‘IPF’, that comprises the 
possibilities for ipf listed in table 1. By contex-
tual, discourse pragmatic or general pragmatic 
principles (which fix TO), this metavariable gets 
disambiguated as to what kind of relation it ex-
presses. As one TO allows for several readings 
(cf. 2a-c), the relation obtained by the disam-
biguation is sense-general and needs further en-
richment to yield the contextually relevant 
reading. This process is an instance of the draw-
ing of  I-inferences referring to a certain concept. 
Encyclopaedic knowledge makes certain 
assumptions more likely than others, and if these 
assumptions lead to a relevant interpretation, all 
other lines of interpretation are dismissed. Often 
encountered concepts are more likely to get ac-
cessed, as they require less effort in getting acti-
vated. 
2a. Moj otec govoril po-turecki.   
 my father speak:PAST:ipf Turkish 
‘My father could speak Turkish.’  
2b. Perevodčik  govoril  po-turecki. 
 translator speak:PAST:ipf Turkish 
 ‘The translator was speaking Turkish.’  
As the potential reading (2a) is not relevant 
with (2b) – translators are supposed to be able to 
speak a certain language –, other interpretations 
are looked for, here the actual-processual. 
2c. Perevodčik govoril i po-turecki.  
 translator speak:PAST:ipf also Turkish 
 ‘The translator could also speak Turkish.’ 
The insertion of i (‘also’) in (2c), however, 
creates the appropriate context for the potential 
reading to be relevant.  
The reasoning stops as soon as a relevant in-
terpretation is achieved. 
Note that lexical content of the verb and as-
pect strictly have to be kept apart; ipf requires a 
certain input and if a verb is only providing a τ in 
its semantic representation, the required phase 
has to be induced – again, by means of context or 
pragmatic reasoning. This may result in an itera-
tive reading, or in ‘zooming in’ in the (inferred) 
preparation phase ϕ
dyn
, (cf. 3a-b; cf. also 9a-b 
below): 
3a. Ivan vyigral gonku.  
 Ivan win:PAST:pf race:ACC 
 ‘Ivan won the race.’  
The pf is applied to a verb vyigrat´(‘win’) that 
provides a boundary in its semantic representa-
tion and therefore no interpretational rearrange-
ments are necessary. 
b. Ivan vyigryval gonku (četyre raza). 
 Ivan win: PAST:ipf race:ACC four times. 
‘Ivan won the race four times / was winning 
the race.’  
The application of the ipf in (3b) requires a 
ϕ
dyn
; the verb does not provide one, thus it has to 
be induced by iteration, or by inferring and 
‘zooming in’ on it, e.g. in a context fixing a cer-
tain moment withinϕ
dyn
, e.g. a when-clause. 
This coercion process is to be located at the 
transition from 1 to 2 (figure 2) and may be cap-
tured in terms of M-inferences: marked expre-
ssions warn ‘marked situation’. Again, we are 
dealing with an interaction of implicature and 
explicature: ‘Marked situation’ is the implica-
ture, that gives rise to the explicatures that ex-
plain the markedness
3
 of the situation in deriving 
a relevant reading, i.e. steps 2 and 3 are carried 
out as in the non-coercion case. Note further that 
this reasoning process is not carried out step by 
step, but in parallel adjustment, which may be 
modelled within a game-theoretic framwork or 
                                                      
3
lly unmarked. The notion of 
orm notions of morphological 
and semantic markedness. 
 Note, that the ipf aspect remains semantica
pragmatic markedness has to be distinguished f
Metavariable
IPF 
ϕ
dyn
]ϕ
dyn
 τ ϕ
stat
[ [ϕ
dyn
 τ ϕ
stat
]
I 
actual-
processual
II 
habitual,  
cotinuous, 
potential,  
permanent, 
atemporal 
III 
general-factual, 
durative 
Q-implicature 
inference alone 
disambiguation 
decoding + infer-
ence 
enrichment 
decoding + infe-
rence 
1)
2)
3) subpropositional level:
Explicature 
propositional level: 
Implicature 
parallel adjustment 
AMBIGUITY 
SENSE-
GENERALITY 
SPECIFICITY 
Figure 2. Pragmatic reasoning behind the derivation of ipf readings
within bidirectional optimality theory. 
Q- and M-inferences differ crucially from I-
inferences in that the latter arise from the inter-
play of semantic representation with context, 
while Q- and M-inferences do not need any con-
text for derivation, but are based on sets of alter-
nates with essentially the same form and 
contrastive semantic content in the case of Q-
inferences, and with contrasting forms but essen-
tially the same inherent semantic content in the 
case of M-inferences. That is, Q- and M-
inferences can be drawn on the basis of what is 
lexically given and on the sets of possible alter-
nates. They give rise to utterance-type meaning 
as they are based on general expectations on how 
language is normally used (Levinson, 2000). 
This property is useful for NLP applications as 
will be shown in section 4 below. It is due to this 
difference, that Q-/M- and I-implicatures come 
into play at different levels of  meaning composi-
tion, inference and interpretation.  
Figure 2 sketches the pragmatic processes in-
volved in the derivation of the specific readings. 
What becomes obvious from figure 2 is the fact 
that there is one level at which ambiguity is to be 
postulated and one level where we are dealing 
with sense-generality: The three relations the IPF 
meta-variable may give rise to are instances of 
ambiguity; the disambiguated relations, however, 
are still sense-general and have to be further 
specified in the course of interpretation. Once 
detected, the ambiguity is easy to handle, as in 
most cases it gets disambiguated by lexical 
means specifying TO. The specification of the 
sense-generality involved is more difficult to 
deal with.  
3.3 Interaction 
What has been outlined so far suggests that a 
more pragmatically oriented analyses of closed 
classes of morphems, aspect in the present case, 
yields interesting insights and resolves puzzles 
that arise from the apparently elusive and vari-
able content of these expressions (Levinson, 
2000: 98). 
Much of the confusion within aspectology, 
and presumably within further grammatical cate-
gories, arises due to a neglect of pragmatics and 
to definitions of aspect that take pragmatic infer-
ences as part of its semantics (Bickel, 1996). The 
division of labour advocated in this paper keeps 
the semantics of aspect rather simple, but has to 
be supported by general pragmatic principles. 
Such an analysis is cross-linguistically applicable 
and facilitates systematic comparison of different 
aspectual systems. Furthermore, such a simple 
semantics provides a suitable input for NLP ap-
plications. 
The division of labour between semantics and 
pragmatics, i.e. the relation between the input 
provided by the lexicon and the contribution of 
pragmatic reasoning, varies from language to 
language, but the semantics stated in the selec-
tional theory, and the inferential heuristics them-
selves remain stable across languages.  
4 Implications for NLP 
Without a principled account of pragmatic, i.e. 
inferential, principles, applications in natural lan-
guage processing will necessarily fail. This 
means, that the lexically given facts currently 
being processed have to be combined with in-
formation from former parse-states – as the in-
terpretation is modelled as processing 
incrementally from left to right (Kempson et al., 
2001) –, with general heuristics of pragmatic rea-
soning and with access to conceptual knowledge. 
To make the findings so fare suitable for NLP,  
the decisive input factors have to be stated as 
well as the principles of their interaction. Con-
trary to human interpretation of underspecified 
forms, where meaning is constructed predomi-
nantly by abductive reasoning, in computer 
driven interpretation meanings have to be se-
lected from an a priori established list of possi-
bilities (cf. Sonnenhauser, 2004). For ipf this 
means that a list of readings has to be compiled 
(see table 1), the factors involved their derivation 
have to be fixed and rules of interaction have to 
be stated that can be expressed in the deductive, 
propositional logic form A → B (cf. Vazov and 
Lapalme, 2000), where A is the premise, i.e. it 
states the conditions for the rules to apply, and B 
the conclusion, i.e. the derived reading. 
4.1 The input 
Input factors for algorithms are the following: 
Verbs indexed for the ϕ and τ they contain
4
; lexi-
cal items indexed for whether they add ϕ or τ, 
and aspectual selectors indexed for what they 
select and for their status within the language 
specific semantic markedness relation. That is 
how Q-inferences are drawn. TO constrains the 
possible interpretations of the unmarked aspec-
                                                      
4
 Languages differ as to whether this lexical specification already gives rise to 
‘default aspect’ (Bohnemeyer and Swift, 2001) as in Russian, or not, as in  
Turkish. 
tual partner in disambiguating IPF. As it is in 
most cases lexically given, adverbials are to be 
annotated as to what kind of TO they fix.  
To capture M-inferences, the default combina-
tions of base and selector have to be stated, as 
well as rules for resolving possibly occurring 
mismatches. The M-inferences then can be 
pinned down by coercion operators (Pulman, 
1997; Thomas and Pulman, 1999). As pointed 
out above, the metalinguistic Q- and M-
inferences can be handeled purley on the basis of 
the lexically given input and on the basis of the 
possible alternatives that have to be stated as 
well. 
The presumably most difficult problem is how 
to specify verbs for the conceptual knowledge 
they provide access to, which is indespensable 
for I-inference to be drawn. One means is corpus 
analysis in order to detect regularities and 
coocurrences of lexical items that might hint to a 
conceptual connection
5
. As the factor ‘probabil-
ity’ cannot be completely eliminated, a condition 
has to be implemented preferring the shortest line 
of reasoning (Thomas and Pulman, 1999).  
Furthermore, a mechanism must be imple-
mented that parallels the stop mechanism in hu-
man interpretation, i.e. a mechanism that stops 
the search for information to be built in in the 
interpretation process. The reasoning stops as 
soon a truth-conditional interpretation is 
achieved, i.e. as soon as the requirement for that 
propositional content is achieved. It is this re-
quirement that crucially drives the interpretation 
process (cf. the requirement ‘?Ty(t)’ in the Dy-
namic Syntax approach as advocated by 
Kempson et al., 2001).  
Interpretation of aspectual forms processes in-
crementally, i.e. information once provided and 
processed cannot be undone. 
4.2 The ‘default’ case 
The default case is a match of basis and marker
6
, 
where the verbal basis provides the necessary 
input for the marker to apply. For ipf, the condi-
tions have to be stated under which the three pos-
sibilites (figure 1) get activated. Here, TO – 
primarily specified by temporal or manner ad-
verbials (e.g. vse bol´še ‘more and more’, 
chorošo ‘well’) – is decisive. Adverbials of car-
                                                      
5
 Assuming an associative organization of memory, where related things are 
probabilistically associated reflecting generalizations about regularities in an 
organism’s perception of and interaction with its environment (Robinson, 
1997), this statistical approach indeed seems to be on the right track. 
6
 ‘Marker’ is the general term that subsumes also cases of default aspect, 
where there is no overt morphological marking, as frequently encountered in 
Russian. 
dinality and duration fix TO as retrospective and 
the reading as being out of group III. The rule for 
this line of interpretation can be stated as follows 
(adopted from Vazov and Lapalme, 2000): 
4. IF ipf is applied to a verb providing a phase 
AND if there is an adverbial fixing TO as 
retrospective 
THEN the reading is out of group III.  
5a. general-factual reading 
Ja uže rasskazyval  vam ėtu istoriju .  
I already tell:PAST:ipf  you:DAT this story:ACC 
‘I already told you this story.’  
5b. durative reading 
 Ja guljala ot trech to pjati.   
 I go-for-a-walk:PAST:ipf from three:Gen to five:Gen 
 ‘From three to five, I went for a walk.’ 
Both interpretations can be overridden if TO is 
turned into a synchronous one by adverbials of 
the type vsegda (‘always’) or obyčno (‘usually’): 
6a. habitual reading 
 Ja obyčno guljala ot trech to pjati.  
I usually go-for-walk:PAST:ipf from three to five  
‘I usually went for a walk from three to 
five.’ 
This shows the incremental way of interpreta-
tion, whereby the inner parts are left intact: 
6b. [
syn.unbounded
obyčno [
retro
ot...do[
syn.bounded
 gujal]]] 
The outermost TO is the one relevant for dis-
course advancement or non-advancement, re-
spectively. 
A synchronous TO may be bounded or un-
bounded (group I and II, table 1), cf. (7) and (8):  
7. IF ipf is applied to a verb providing a phase 
AND if there is an adverbial fixing TO as 
synchronous bounded/unbounded 
THEN the reading is out of group I/II 
8a.  actual-processual reading 
 V vosem´ časov, ja čitala knigu.   
 at eight o´clock, I read:Past:ipf book:Acc 
 ‘At eight o´clock, I was reading a book.’ 
8b. inactual reading 
 Ran´še, on rabotal v universitete.  
 before  he work:PAST:ipf  at university  
 ‘He used to work at university.’ (= ‘He was 
 working as a teacher.’) 
Depending on the semantic representation of 
the verb, implicatures or presuppositions may 
arise. Ipf with the structure [ϕ τ] leaves the 
reaching of the boundary as an implicature, ipf 
with [τ ϕ] leaves the initial boundary as presup-
position. That is how the semantic representa-
tions of verbs provide background and frame for 
pragmatic reasoning.  
4.3 The ‘coercion’ case 
Whenever an aspectual marker is applied on a 
basis not providing the relevant feature (ϕ or τ) 
for it to apply, that feature is semantically or 
pragmatically induced in order to eliminate that 
mismatch. Coercion operators capture this re-
categorization process (Pulman, 1997): 
9a. Ivan vyigral gonku.   
 Ivan win:PAST:pf race:ACC 
 ‘Ivan won the race.’  
Here, pf is applied to a verb that provides a τ; 
no coercion is necessary. 
9b. Ivan vyigryval gonku (četyre raza). 
 Ivan win: PAST:ipf race:ACC (four times). 
 ‘Ivan won the race four times / was winning
 the race.’ 
The application of ipf in (9b) requires a ϕ, 
which the verb vyigrat´ (‘win’) does not provide. 
So it has to be induced by iteration or by zoom-
ing in on ϕ
dyn
. Two  coercion operators may be 
applied: “iterate / stretch: point → process” 
(Pulman, 1997). In most cases, context provides 
the necessary cues for disambiguation (e.g. an 
iterative adverbials or a when-clause), if not, one 
has to rely on the ‘probability-condition’. 
9c. V vosem časov ona uže vyšla.  
 at eight o´clock she already leave:PAST:pf 
 ‘At eight o´clock, she had already left.’  
 (= she was gone)  
For the consequent-state reading in (9c) to 
arise, the prefix vy- first has to induce the bound-
ary required for pf to apply. Uže (‘already’) here 
triggers the application of the coercion operator 
“add-cstate: X → <X, state>, where X is point or 
process” (Pulman 1997). The rules for (9b) are: 
10a. IF ipf is applied to a verb providing no 
phase, AND a lexical item indicating itera-
tion is present      
THEN induce the phase by application of 
‘ite-rate’ 
10b. IF ipf is applied to a verb providing no phase 
AND and adverbial/clause indicating inci-
dence is present    
THEN induce the phase by application of 
‘stretch’   
The application of ipf onto a verbal basis pro-
viding merely a τ (prior to coercion) is both prag-
matically and morphologically marked, but ipf 
does not lose its semantic unmarkedness. Though 
interpretation in terms of coercion is composi-
tional, the specific reading this coercion gives 
gives rise to depends on linguistic context and 
world-knowledge (de Swart, 1998); cf. (11)
7
:  
11. On rešal zadaču.    
 he solve:PAST:ipf exercise:ACC   
11a. actual-processual reading  
 ‘He was solving the exercise.’ 
11b. conative reading   
 ‘He tried to solve the exercise.’ 
11c. general-factual reading   
 ‘He (*solved)
8
 the exercise.’ 
Whereas (11c) can be disambiguated by fixing 
TO as retrospective, (11a) and (11b) cannot be 
distinguished by TO alone as both require it to be 
synchronous. The distinction between the possi-
ble readings is left to contextual disambiguation 
and world-knowledge. Gaining probability val-
ues and assigning them to interpretations by a 
statistical approach taking into account judge-
ments of native speakers seems to be a possible 
way (cf. Glovinskaja, 1982 for the habitual, po-
tential and actual-processual reading), but the 
probability rankings can be overriden by the lexi-
cal content of verbal phrases.  
5 Concluding remarks 
The framework presented here allows for taking 
also pragmatic reasoning processes into account 
in computing interpretations. Without a princi-
pled account of inferential principles NLP appli-
cations have to fail. The rather sketchy picture 
presented here might serve as a starting point for 
identifying semantic and pragmatic factors in the 
aspecto-temporal system of Russian. A lot of 
problems remain to be solved. Corpus analyses 
and the appropriate annotation of verbs, aspect 
markers and adverbials are the prerequisite for 
formulating rules that enable the systematic deri-
vation and computation of the readings. Further-
more, the interaction of the different factors has 
to be studied in a wider domain, i.e. on the para-
graph level.  
The selection-theoretic and pragmatic assump-
tions outlined in this paper can be claimed to be 
cross-linguistically valid, but languages differ in 
their respective contribution of semantics and 
general pragmatic reasonig.  
This approach, that combines generality of lin-
guistic expressions with systematic pragmatic 
principles, can be extended to further instances 
of grammatical underspecification. The system 
established in this paper allows for a systematic 
                                                      
7
 The readings listed here involve different degrees of context-dependency. 
8
 Note that this general-factual reading arises only in special contexts, and in 
the present example is difficult to translate into English.  
comparison of languages on a uniform basis that 
permits a systematic derivation of the respective 
readings and a principled account account of the 
differences.  

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