Semantics and pragmatics in the derivation of aspectual readings in Russian

Natural language expressions are generally underspecified and need specification of different kinds to get a contextually relevant interpretation. One instance of underspecification is the imperfective aspect in Russian, which gives rise to a considerable variety of readings. This poses certain problems for an account in purely semantic terms: What is the common denominator of all these interpretations? Is there a systematic way to derive the different readings? To answer these and related questions, this paper proposes an account in more pragmatic terms based on a “selectional theory” of aspect.