Rajesh Bhatt, University of Pennsylvania/MIT (a version of this paper was also presented at the Indian GLOW in Hyderabad)
The paper argues that there are two kinds of ability attributions realized by can/be able: one that means something `manage to' and one that means something like `had the ability to'. The distribution of the two kinds of ability attributions is related to the availability of generic readings. The `had the ability to' ability attribution appears in generic environments, while the `managed to' ability attribution appears in non-generic environments. In languages where imperfective aspect appears on generic sentences (sentences in the perfective aspect lack generic readings), we find that when the ability modal occurs with imperfective aspect, there is no actuality entailment (cf. the Hindi sak-taa `CAN-Habitual'). When the ability modal occurs in the past perfective, there is an actuality entailment (cf. the Hindi sak-aa `CAN-Perfective').