Bound Ability Readings of Imperfective Verbs

Temporal for-adverbials and in-adverbials are commonly used as a diagnostics for distinguishing between perfective and imperfective aspect, respectively. We observe that in Czech imperfective verbs may combine with in-adverbials as long as the resulting reading is a bounded ability reading. We argue, in line with van Geenhoven (2004); Zucchi and White (2001), that there is no intrinsic grammatical incompatibility of imperfective verbs and in-adverbials. The seeming ungrammaticality stems from pragmatic oddness of the obtained reading. Once an appropriate context is provided, the utterance becomes felicitous. As for the obligatory ability reading, we argue that it results from incompatibility of an episodic reading and the imperfective morphology.