Anticausatives are weak scalar expressions, not reflexive expressions

We discuss conceptual and empirical arguments from Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages against an analysis treating anticausative verbs as derived from their lexical causative counterparts under reflexivization. Instead, we defend the standard account to the semantics of the causative alternation according to which anticausatives in general, and anticausatives marked with reflexive morphology in particular, denote simple one-place inchoative events that are logically entailed by their lexical causative counterparts. Under such an account, anticausative verbs are weak scalar expressions that stand in a semantico-pragmatic opposition to their strong lexical causative counterparts. Due to this scalar relation, the use of an anticausative can trigger the implicature that the use of its lexical causative counterpart is too strong. As usual with implicatures, they can be ‘metalinguistically’ denied, cancelled, or reinforced and we argue that these mechanisms explain all central empirical facts brought up in the literature in favor of a treatment of anticausatives as semantically reflexive predicates. Our results reinforce the view that the reflexive morphemes used in many (Indo-European) languages to mark anticausatives do not necessarily trigger reflexive semantics. However, we also show that a string involving a reflexively marked (anti-)causative verb can be forced into a semantically reflexive construal under particular conceptual or grammatical circumstances.


Introduction
Lexical causative verbs such as the verb in (1a) and their anticausative counterparts such as the verb in (1b) are standardly assumed to have semantics along the lines of (2a, b) (e.g. Parsons 1990). Under this view (henceforth: 'the standard theory'), a causative verb denotes a causal relation between an event and a change of state, the latter being denoted by the corresponding anticausative verb. Consequently, the truth of a clause headed by a causative verb entails the truth of the clause headed by its anticausative counterpart, that is if (1a) is true then (1b) is necessarily true, too: 1 (1) a. John opened the door. b. The door opened.

cause [become [(x) open]]] b. λx[become [(x) open]]
Most English causative-anticausative verb pairs are morphologically identical, constituting a so-called labile alternation (with very few exceptions such as lay vs. lie or raise vs. rise, which show stem allomorphy). Other languages, however, often differentiate one of the alternates morphologically (e.g. Haspelmath 1993). Many Indo-European languages also have, besides a set of labile or unmarked anticausative verbs, a set of morphologically marked anticausative verbs. The Spanish examples in (3) and (4) illustrate this. While the anticausative verb in (3b) is morphologically identical to its causative counterpart in (3a), the anticausative verb in (4b) differs from its causative counterpart in (4a) in that it obligatorily co-occurs with a se-reflexive clitic (other Indo-European languages use a free se-reflexive pronoun or a reflexive verbal affix to mark (a subset of) their anticausatives.) 2 Without going into any theoretical details, many accounts build on the pre-theoretical intuition depicted in (5a, b) that the presence of the se-morpheme in marked anticausatives reflects the absence of the external causer argument and the eventuality introducing this external causer argument (the cause predicate and its argument y) in the semantic representation of anticausatives (e.g. Grimshaw 1981;Reinhart 2000;2002;Doron 2003;Reinhart & Siloni 2005;Schäfer 2008; Alexiadou et al. 2015, though the theoretical assumptions and semantic details differ a lot). Consequently, marked anticausatives denote simple inchoative events, too, as shown in (5b).
(3) a. Juan aumentó los precios. Juan increased the prices 'Juan increased the prices.' b. Los precios aumentaron. the prices increased 'The prices increased.' (4) a. Juan rompió el vaso. Juan broke the glass 'Juan broke the glass.' b. El vaso se rompió. the glass se broke 'The glass broke.' mentary event predicates and, therefore, also faces the problem how to account for the entailment relation at the level of lexical semantics. A reviewer reminds us that Neeleman & Van de Koot (2012) argue that natural language predicates involve a causing event neither in their lexical-semantic representation nor in their syntax. Indeed, the entailment relation could be expressed also in the absence of such an event. 2 The distribution of marked and unmarked anticausatives differs across languages. For example, most Spanish anticausatives are marked while most Dutch anticausatives are unmarked. German, French or Italian have much more marked than unmarked anticausatives, but the latter class still comprises dozens of verbs. Importantly, the same lexical concepts do not necessarily enter the same morphological class across languages. For example, German brechen ('break') is unmarked, while its Spanish counterpart is marked (cf. 4b). Finally, many languages have a small set of optionally marked anticausatives, e.g. French (se) casser (break); see Schäfer (2008), Martin & Schäfer (2014) for discussion.
Under the standard account then, se-marked and unmarked anticausatives do not differ semantically (cf. (5b) and (2b)); both denote simple inchoative events undergone by their sole DP argument. Consequently, both should be entailed by their causative counterparts because the latter denotes the causation of the event denoted by the former. This standard view on anticausatives in general, and on reflexively marked anticausatives in particular, leaves open, however, an important puzzle. Why are (across languages and far beyond the Indo-European language family; cf. Haspelmath 1993) markers of anticausatives often syncretic with markers of reflexivity, that is, why do we find so often the same morphological marker with anticausative verbs that normally produces canonically reflexive verbs? The Spanish canonically reflexive verb in (6b) illustrates the point again; (6a) shows what we call the 'transitive-disjoint use' of the very same verb. 3 (6) a. La madre lavó al niño. the mother washed to.the boy 'The mother washed the boy.' b. El niño se lavó.
the boy se washed 'The boy washed.' In (6b), the se-morpheme arguably acts as a reflexivizer with the meaning in (7) (or as a locally bound variable, i.e. an anaphor) 4 in that it takes a transitive relation ℜ such as the transitive verb lavar (wash) in (6a) with the semantics in (8a) as its argument and identifies the two arguments of the relation, thereby producing the reflexive verbal meaning in (8b). The sentence in (6b) then means that the boy was the agent as well as the patient of a washing event: A number of scholars, in particular Chierchia (2004) and Koontz-Garboden (2009), suggested that the puzzling syncretism between se-marked anticausatives and se-marked canonically reflexive verbs follows from an identical semantic content or function of the se-morpheme in the two verb classes; se acts as a reflexivizer in anticausatives just as it does in canonical reflexive verbs. We call this proposal the 'reflexivization analysis of anticausatives ' (henceforth RAoAC). Under this proposal, a se-marked anticausative verb is derived from a transitive lexical entry simply by adding the se-reflexivizer in (7). The only difference between verbs undergoing canonical reflexivization and verbs forming marked anticausatives lies in the nature of the external argument role. As discussed in more detail in the next section, the external argument role of a causative verb with an anticausative alternate is not a human agent but it is an underspecified effector (see 9a), which can also be realized as a non-human causer entity. Adding the reflexivizer in (7) to 3 A further question, which we leave aside here, is why do we find marked and unmarked anticausatives in one and the same language in the first place? See Haspelmath (1993), Schäfer (2008) or Alexiadou et al. (2015) for discussion and further references. 4 Nothing hinges on the choice between the two concepts at this point as they ultimately provide the same meaning for (6b); see however Doron & Rappaport Hovav (2007), Spathas (2012), Schäfer (2012) or Sportiche (2014) for arguments from focus alternatives which show that the se-morpheme in canonically reflexive verbs is actually a bound variable/anaphor which carries the internal argument thematic role (pace the standard assumption since Kayne 1975 that se-reflexive verbs are intransitive).
the transitive causative verb in (9a) sets identical the external argument effector with the internal argument theme as in (9b). Then, according to (9b) the anticausative clause in (4b) says that 'the glass' was the effector as well as the theme of a breaking event. Since break is a causative verb, this means that 'the glass caused its own breaking'. Note that the reflexivization analysis of anticausatives in (9a, b) crucially differs from the standard analysis in (2a, b/4a, b) in that it predicts that a causative clause does not entail its corresponding anticausative clause, i.e. (4a) should not entail (4b). This is the same as with the canonically reflexive sentence (6b), which is, of course, not entailed by its transitive-disjoint counterpart in (6a). The reflexivization analysis of anticausatives (RAoAC) was proposed most prominently in the work by Chierchia (2004) for Italian and Koontz-Garboden (2009) for Spanish (see also Beavers & Koontz-Garboden 2013a;b) and we will concentrate on their proposals because they provide explicit semantics that allow for falsification (in particular (9a, b) which is taken from Koontz-Garboden 2009). However, other authors have made (sometimes only in passing) similar suggestions for different languages, for example Manzini & Savoia (2001; for Italian, Medová (2012) for Czech, Beavers & Zubair (2013) for Sinhala, Fehrmann et al. (2014) for Russian or Lundquist et al. (ms.) for Norwegian.
We will discuss a number of conceptual and empirical arguments that suggest that the RAoAC cannot be upheld. 5 In fact, a number of authors have argued against the RAoAC before, in particular Horvath & Siloni (2011; (with rejoinders in Beavers & Koontz-Garboden 2013a; b) and Alexiadou et al. (2015). In section 2, we will take up from these preceding publications some basically conceptual aspects in the discussion of the RAoAC in order to set some background. In section 3, we will add new semantic arguments that are complementary to those given in the above-mentioned earlier work. We, thereby, hope to add further support to the conclusion reached by these authors and to further clarify aspects in the argumentation that seemed to remain undecided. In particular, we will apply in section 3 tests that show that marked and unmarked anticausatives are entailed by their causative counterparts, while the same does, of course, not hold for canonically reflexive verbs and their transitive-disjoint counterparts. As we will also discuss, the arguments presented in the literature in favor of the RAoAC turn out to be conceptually and/or empirically misguided; under closer scrutiny they do not point to a reflexive relationship between causatives and anticausatives but to a scalar relationship. Such a scalar relationship follows from the standard semantics in (2a, b)/(4a, b) which state that a causative clause entails its anticausative counterpart. As is well known, scalar predicates can trigger implicatures; and in fact, the use of an anticausative often triggers the implicature that its causative counterpart does not hold true, an effect that derives a number of observations in the context of the causative alternation in general, and in the discussion of the RAoAC in particular (see Rappaport Hovav 2014 for related observations about contextual restrictions on the use of (anti-)causatives).
More far-reaching, our results support the conclusion that se-marked anticausatives form a semantically uniform class with unmarked anticausatives (e.g. Schäfer 2008;Horvath & Siloni 2011;Alexiadou et al. 2015) as well as with other clearly inchoative structures such as non-alternating unaccusative verbs and eventive copula+adjective constructions (Schäfer 2008;Alexiadou et al. 2015). This means that the se-morpheme does not always act as a reflexivizer (or a bound anaphor; cf. fn. 4) and that the identical morphological marking found in anticausatives and canonically reflexive verbs across languages is a real syncretism (same form, different function). However, as we will discuss, nothing (except world knowledge) blocks semantic reflexivization of causative verbs. Therefore, a surface string such as (4b) can, in principle, receive the reading in (8b), but only under very specific circumstances. The RAoAC, on the other hand, wrongly predicts meaning (2b) to be generally unavailable for se-marked anticausatives.
For practical reasons, we restrict our discussion to Indo-European languages with a se-morpheme/se-reflexive element. In fact, we will mainly use examples from German and Spanish, but in order to reach some cross-linguistic significance, we will set out at least some of our empirical tests in two Romance languages (Spanish, Italian), two Germanic languages (German, Norwegian) and two Slavic languages (Russian and Czech). The semantic and pragmatic tests presented below should, however, be applicable to languages from other language families using different morphological devices, too. 6 Before we turn to a discussion of the semantic predictions of the RAoAC, we will first look in the next section at some conceptual arguments that might speak in favor of the RAoAC as this allows us to characterize a bit more this proposal as well as some linguistic issues against which this proposal should be evaluated.

Conceptual evaluation of the RAoAC
In this section, we survey three conceptual arguments brought forward in favor of the RAoAC.
One main argument concerns the puzzle about the multifunctionality of reflexive morphology. If se acts as a reflexivizer both in canonical reflexive verbs and in marked anticausatives, then the puzzle why se shows up with anticausatives is solved. It applies to causative verbs to derive, in a well-defined and fully compositional way, what received the descriptive term 'marked anticausative' in the literature. Under the standard analysis, the semantic impact of the se-morpheme in anticausatives remains unclear; in any case, it cannot be reduced to the canonical use of the se-morpheme.
As is well known, se-reflexive morphemes can be used for a wider range of constructions than just canonically reflexive verbs and marked anticausatives; in many languages, they are also used in generic middles, passives or even in impersonal constructions (cf. Spanish (10a-c)) (see also Koontz-Garboden 2009: 92 fn. 11;Horvath & Siloni 2013: 218). 6 A reviewer finds it implausible that there should be no languages that mark anticausative verbs with canonically reflexive morphology but do not interpret them as being semantically reflexive. Our conclusions are meant to hold minimally for the synchronic state of the above-mentioned six Indo-European languages but we believe them to actually be true for all other Indo-European languages using se-morphemes as markers of anticausatives and we hypothesize that they are true even beyond this language family. However, we agree with the reviewer that the question has to be investigated for every language and every (formally) reflexive morpheme again, and one goal of this paper is it to augment the list of conceptual considerations and empirical tests in order to do so. We also find plausible the reviewer's suggestion that the diachronic development of anticausative markers out of reflexive markers points to a diachronic state where reflexively marked anticausatives are, indeed, interpreted reflexively. However, we find it rather implausible that speakers of different Indo-European languages, which use se-morphemes in a fully gramaticalized fashion as a marker of anticausatives (and further Voices which arguably do not involve reflexivization) should conceptualize anticausative change-of-state events fundamentally different, some as inchoative one-place predicates, others as semantically reflexivized two-place predicates.
We agree with Horvath & Siloni (2013) that it is impossible to account for the semantics of these constructions in terms of reflexivization. If true, morphological identity does not necessarily reflect semantic identity and this particular conceptual advantage of the RAoAC vanishes. However, the data in (10a-c) do by no means invalidate the RAoAC. In any case, the question remains significant: how do we correctly divide the space marked with se-morphemes into a semantically reflexive part and one with different semantics. 7 (10) a. Estas patatas se cortan fácilmente. these potatoes se cut easily 'These potatoes cut easily. Second, Koontz-Garboden (2007;) points out that the RAoAC avoids the violation of the monotonicity hypothesis in (11): (11) Monotonicity Hypothesis (Koontz-Garboden 2007;cf. Kiparsky 1982): Word formation operations add, but do not remove, meaning.
Many accounts that assume the standard semantics of (marked) anticausatives in (5b), on the other hand, violate monotonicity. This is so if they assume that verbs forming marked anticausatives are basically stored with their transitive lexical entry (i.e. 5a) and the se-marked anticausative use of the verb with the semantics in (5b) is derived from the transitive entry. Under such a view, adding the se-morpheme to the entry in (5a) leads to a deletion of the cause predicate (cf. (5b)), and this clearly violates monotonicity. However, the problem arises only if se-marked anticausatives are literally derived from their transitive counterpart. There are, however, theories of word formation that technically do not derive marked anticausatives from their causative variants (e.g. Piñón 2001;Doron 2003;Schäfer 2008;Alexiadou et al. 2015); these do not violate monotonicity (as already pointed out by Horvath & Siloni 2013: 218). The latter authors argue that the lexical derivation of anticausatives from causatives as it is executed in the Theta System (Reinhart 2000;2002;Reinhart & Siloni 2005 et seq.) should not be seen as a violation of monotonicity. In this framework, decausativization applies at a lexical level that is assumed to lack event decomposition; consequently, it does not delete a causative event but only the thematic information about a verb's external argument/causer (see Horvath & Siloni 2013: 218 for details). We conclude that the above conceptual arguments in favor of the RAoAC are not decisive. Whether se-marked anticausatives should be subsumed under the semantics of canonically reflexive verbs seems to remain then a purely empirical question. When we turn to a third conceptual argument, however, brought forward in favor of the RAoAC, we will see that under closer scrutiny, this argument not only turns against the RAoAC under conceptual reasoning, but it also brings about a first set of empirical problems for the RAoAC. 7 We therefore do not want to deny that the basic function of se-reflexive elements is reflexivization (or anaphoric binding) as this is suggested by the fact that this use comes first both diachronically as well as typologically (pace Horvath & Siloni 2013: 218, who claim that "it is not at all desirable to relate the relevant morpheme specifically with reflexivization"). Under our view, the question then is how a reflexivizer (or actually an anaphor; see fn. 4) can turn into a marker for Voice phenomena that do not involve reflexive semantics; see Schäfer (2008), Alexiadou et al. (2015) or Beavers & Koontz-Garboden (2013b) for proposals. Koontz-Garboden (2009) argues that only the RAoAC can derive the so-called 'underspecified external argument generalization' on anticausative formation given in (12), which was first discussed in the work by Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995) and Reinhart (2000). Other theories, he argues, in particular those building on detransitivization, must stipulate the existence of (12). 8 (12) Underspecified External Argument Generalization: Only transitive verbs that do not restrict the θ-role of their external argument to agents enter the (anti-)causative alternation.
The Spanish examples in (13) and (14) illustrate the generalization in (12). A verb like desmontar ('dismantle') selects a human agent as its external argument; non-human causers and instruments are not allowed (13a). (12) correctly predicts that this verb does not form an anticausative (13b). The verb romper ('break'), on the other hand, selects an underspecified effector as its external argument since agents, non-human causers as well as instruments can appear (14a), and in accordance with (12) the verb allows an anticausative use (14b).
(13) a. Juan / * el accidente / * el destornillador desmontó el coche. John / the accident / the screwdriver dismantled the car 'John/*the accident/*the screwdriver dismantled the car.' b. *El coche se desmontó (por sí solo). the car se dismantled by se self 'The car got dismantled.' (14) a. El vándalo / la tormenta / la piedra rompió la ventana. the vandal / the storm / the rock broke the window 'The vandal/the storm/the rock broke the window.' b. La ventana se rompió (por sí sola). the window se broke by se self 'The window broke (by itself).' Recall that the thematic underspecification of the external argument of verbs like romper is at the core of the RAoAC. Since romper selects an underspecified effector lacking any agent entailments, the non-human theme the window can also be assigned this external effector role in (14b) under reflexivization. The ungrammaticality of (13b) on the other hand follows because the verb involved selects for an agent external argument and since the theme is non-human and lacks agentive properties, this selectional restriction is not fulfilled if (13b) involves reflexivization. Explaining the generalization in (12) via the RAoAC raises, however, a problem. To see this, note that Koontz-Garboden (2009) assumes that only se-marked anticausatives are semantically reflexive (cf. (9b)). Unmarked anticausatives such as (3b) on the other hand are assumed to have the standard semantics in (2b/4b) expressing simple one-place inchoative events. Unmarked anticausatives must then be lexically stored and the causative version must be derived by causativization. 9 However, the generalization in (12) holds for marked as well as unmarked anticausatives. While the RAoAC seems to account for the fact that marked anticausatives are subject to (12), it has nothing to say as to why all verbs forming unmarked anticausatives also allow non-agentive external arguments in their transitive use, i.e. why they are subject to (12), too. Assuming that se-marked and unmarked anticausatives have fundamentally different semantics forces to come up with two different explanations of what seems to be a unitary phenomenon.
It should be noted that this problem does not exist under a version of the RAoAC as Chierchia (2004) suggests it (cf. also Lundquist et al. to appear for Norwegian). He proposes that both marked and unmarked anticausatives are derived by reflexivization from a transitive lexical entry; reflexivization is just not always reflected by surface morphology. The idea is that unmarked anticausatives such as (3b) are similar to English John washed which is arguably semantically reflexive (John washed himself) even though no reflexivizing morphology is present. This idea is not as innocent as suggested, however. While English John washed receives a reflexive interpretation, this option seems to crucially depend on the fact that English lacks a se-reflexive morpheme. All other Indo-European languages that have a se-reflexive morpheme lack zero-derived reflexive verbs of the English type with human subjects (see Alexiadou et al. 2014). That is, in all these languages, strings similar to English John washed, John dressed or John and Mary kissed can only get an interpretation involving object drop (John washed something) but not a reflexive or reciprocal interpretation. 10 Turning back to (12), note that this generalization is strong but not perfect. Basically all languages have individual transitive, causative verbs with an underspecified external argument that do actually not form an anticausative. This is illustrated in (15)  In the worst case, every theory has to stipulate something (e.g. in a lexical entry) to capture the ungrammaticality of (15b) and similar cases. The problem for the RAoAC is that it would have to stipulate that reflexivization is blocked. However, this move seems too strong as reflexivization is arguably not blocked with such a verb whether the external argument is a human or a non-human entity (cf. 16a, b): a. Hans hat sich durch seine Sauferei (selbst) zerstört. John has se through his drinking (self) destroyed 'John destroyed himself with his drinking.' b. Die Rakete hat sich (selbst) zerstört als sie vom korrekten Kurs abkam. the missile has se (self) destroyed when she from.the right course off.came 'The missile destroyed itself when it got off from the right course.' Since reflexivization of transitive predicates cannot be blocked in any reasonable way, the proposal makes the even worse prediction that all unmarked anticausatives, e.g. (17a), should optionally allow se-marking as in (17d). This is so as these verbs allow non-human subjects (17b) and they allow reflexivization (17c). In order to avoid (17d) Finally, it remains unclear why we find reflexively marked anticausatives only in languages with a se-reflexive element. English is a case in point. As the example in (18a) shows, the English self-reflexive pronoun is not restricted to human (or anthropomorphic) antecedents (pace Beavers & Koontz-Garboden 2013a: 214; see also many examples in Stevens 2006); but then, why can't English use its self-reflexive pronoun to derive anticausatives (18b-e)? Note that (18b-e) are not formally ungrammatical. Arguably, speakers reject these examples because their semantics are incompatible with the way they conceive the world. For example, (18c) without the reflexive pronoun expresses that a gap came into existence, but with reflexive pronoun, it expresses that a gap caused itself to come into existence.
But gaps cannot open themselves for conceptual reasons (cf. fn. 11) because this would amount to a world where a causer causes its own existence (see Doron 2003;Alexiadou et al. 2015 for similar examples). Note next that the RAoAC proposes exactly such fallacious semantics for similar examples in languages with se-reflexives. In German, for example, the anticausative version of open is obligatorily expressed with the se-reflexive pronoun (Ein Spalt öffnete sich ('a gap opened se')). To conclude, while it is well known that only se-reflexives but never self-reflexives are used across languages to form marked anti-causatives (e.g. Faltz 1985;Kemmer 1993), the RAoAC has no way to integrate this fact, because the semantic outcome of the two reflexivization strategies is identical. 12

Entailment in the causative alternation
Recall that the semantic relation between a se-marked anticausative and its causative alternate is fundamentally different under the RAoAC and under the standard account. As discussed in detail in Koontz-Garboden (2009), the standard account in (4a, b) predicts a clause headed by a causative verb to entail a clause headed by its anticausative counterpart, while under the RAoAC in (9a, b) no such entailment relation should hold. Koontz-Garboden (2009: 103)  Negation is a downward entailing operator licensing inferences from supersets to subsets. Informally speaking, if an expression A is entailed by B, while the reverse does not hold, then A is semantically weaker than B. And if a weaker semantic expression is not satisfied (or false), any corresponding stronger expression is thereby not satisfied (or false), too. Since the standard theory of the causative alternation repeated in (20) characterizes the meaning of a causative verb and its anticausative alternate as strong and weak expressions, it predicts that the negation of an anticausative event should necessarily make the corresponding causative event false, too. And the example in (19) seems to prove this to be empirically wrong.
The argument goes through, however, only if the negation in (19) is a truth-functional statement about the proposition expressed by the first clause, i.e. if it is a 'logical' (or 'descriptive') use of negation. Alternatively, (19) might involve the so-called 'metalinguistic' use of negation, which does not negate the truth-value of a proposition but objects to a pragmatic aspect of the utterance (Horn 1985, and many others before and since). The different uses of negation are illustrated in (21a-c) and (22a-c) respectively: The propositions in the first clauses of (21a-c) are logically negated, and the following clauses express that, in fact, something different holds true. In (22a-c), however, the negation does not apply to the propositions expressed by the first clauses. If John has five children, as asserted in the second clause of (22a), it is logically true that he has four children, and if the soup is hot, as asserted in the second clause of (22b), it is also warm. Instead, here the negation objects to a scalar implicature that puts an upper bound to the scalar expressions used in the first clauses, the numeral four with its scalar implicature 'not more than four', the adjective warm with its scalar implicature 'not more than warm, i.e. not hot' and the verb hate with its scalar implicature 'not more than hate, i.e. not loathe'. In general, scalar implicatures may arise if a speaker uses a weak scalar expression instead of a stronger alternative. In such a context, the hearer may compute that the stronger alternative does not hold true, because otherwise the speaker would have used this stronger alternative (Maxim of quantity: "make your contribution as informative as required (for the current purposes of exchange)" ;Horn 1985;Grice 1989: 26). 13/14 Since the standard analysis in (20a, b) assigns a stronger meaning to the causative verb than to the anticausative counterpart, the causative-anticausative pair makes up a scale under such an account. The negation in (19) might then simply express that the use of the weaker scale member as in the first clause is not appropriate and should, instead be replaced by the stronger scale member, as in the second clause. We chose the term 'appropriate' instead of 'true' for the following reason (see e.g. Higginbotham 1997). Arguably, every inchoative change-of-state event has some cause in the actual world. However, a speaker that utters a clause headed by an anticausative either does not want to or cannot identify the cause of this event. Under such a speaker's perspective, the use of an anticausative is appropriate, while the use of the corresponding causative verb (be it in the active or in the passive Voice) would not be (cf. also Rappaport Hovav 2014). Whether it is appropriate or not is, however, a question of perspective and context; if one disagrees with the speaker in considering the use of the causative verb appropriate, 'metalinguistic' negation can be applied to the clause headed by the anticausative verb in order to object to and remove the upper bounding scalar implicature associated with this verb.

Spanish ningún
The decision between the RAoAC and the standard account boils down then to the question whether examples such as (19) involve a logical or a 'metalinguistic' use of negation (though actually every downward entailing context would be decisive; see section 3.6). Koontz-Garboden (2009) argues that (19) involves the logical (descriptive) use of negation. His argument builds on the well-known fact illustrated in (23a, b) that 'metalinguistic' negation does not license negative polarity items (NPIs) such as English any; instead, the positive polarity item some must be used (Fauconnier 1975;Ladusaw 1979;Horn 1985). (23) a. John didn't manage to solve some of the problems, he solved them all. b. *John didn't manage to solve any of the problems, he solved them all. (24)  (26b) shows that ningún is not an NPI. Rather, it is a negative quantifier denoting the empty set (as English no), which, in addition, triggers negative concord in its clause (e.g. Bosque 1980;Penka 2007;de Swart 2010). This assumption can account both for the unacceptability of (24b) as well as for the acceptability of (26b). To see how, consider the source of 'metalinguistic' negation in (23a) and in (26a, b). In (23a), the indefinite quantifier some triggers the scalar implicature 'not all'. This implicature is negated 'metalinguistically' in the first clause and corrected in the second clause. The scalar expression in (26a, b) is the verb odiar ('hate'), which triggers the implicature 'Luisa does not loathe children', and this implicature is first overtly negated and then corrected. But in (24b) there is simply no scalar expression available that could trigger any implicature. Exactly the same predicate is used in both clauses (manage to solve); there is therefore no scalar relation between the two occurences of this predicate. Besides, ningún, being a negative quantifier denoting the empty set, does not form a scale with todos ('all') either. As a consequence, the negation in (24b) must be interpreted as 'logical' negation. But then, the second clause in (24b) amounts to a plain contradiction of the first clause, hence the unacceptability.

Koontz-Garboden suggests on the basis of the examples in
The effect can roughly be replicated in English. The clausal pair in (27a) involving the negative quantifier no in the first clause and the universal quantifier all in the second clause amounts to a contradiction; since no and all are in an exclusive relation rather than in a scalar relation and since there are also no other elements involved which license 15 We want to stress here that examples like (25) are indeed fully grammatical, contrary to some speaker intuitions reported in Horvath & Siloni (2011: 2180. However, accepting such sentence pairs demands to come up with some particular context; out of the blue this might be difficult to retrieve for some speakers (see fn. 17). 16 (ia, b) show that odiar (hate) and aborrecer (loathe) are in a scalar relationship with the former the weaker and the latter the stronger scale member.
(i) a. Víctor odia a Rocío, pero no la aborrece. ('Víctor hates Rocío, but he doesn't loathe her') b. #Víctor aborrece a Rocío, pero no la odia. ('Víctor loathes Rocío, but he doesn't hate her') 'metalinguistic' negation, the negation has to be interpreted 'logically'; this explains the contradiction. The indefinite quantifier some in (27b), on the other hand, is in a (weak) scalar relation with the quantifier all, and this allows for a 'metalinguistic' use of negation. In (27c), finally, the two verbs are in a scalar relation. 'Metalinguistic' negation is licensed, and the quantifiers no and all can now be used in the first and the second clause, respectively.
(27) a. For no problem is it the case that John managed to solve it. #John actually managed to solve all of them.
b. For some problems, it is the case that John managed to solve them. John actually managed to solve all of them. c. For no child is it the case that John hates it. John actually loathes all of them.
(24b) and (25) are then compatible with the standard account of the causative alternation after all. The verbs in the two clauses in (25) are in a scalar relationship. The se-marked anticausative in the first clause triggers the implicature that the corresponding lexical causative is too strong. This implicature is negated 'metalinguistically' so that the second clause can correct the first clause without leading to a contradiction. 17 However, we have not yet seen empirical support that examples such as (19) and (25) (19) involve 'metalinguistic' negation; their arguments were disputed in Beavers and Koontz-Garboden 2013a.) As we will see in the next section, the judgments on NPIs are often not as clear-cut as one would like them to be. Therefore, we will turn to other tests to determine the semantic relation between causative and anticausative pairs. 18

Real NPIs in Spanish and beyond
The Spanish scalar particle siquiera (even) has a use as an NPI (e.g. Alonso-Ovalle 2009). As such, it is not licensed in the context of 'metalinguistic' negation as shown in (28). 17 As reported in fn. 15, some speakers have problems with such clauses. If speakers do not detect the implicature associated with the anticausative verb (e.g. in out-of-the-blue contexts), the negation cannot be interpreted 'metalinguistically' and the clausal pairs amount to a contradiction because the first clause is entailed by the second clause. 18 Lundquist et al. (ms.) argue to have found experimental evidence that se-marked anticausatives (and even unmarked anticausatives) in Norwegian are interpreted as semantically reflexive (at least by some speakers). For reasons of space we must direct the reader directly to this paper. While their experimental results are interesting, we do not agree with their interpretation of these results. In our opinion, their data show that i) although yes-no questions are downward entailing contexts, answering a yes-no question with the assertion of an anticausative clause allows the computation of a scalar implicature, which can be 'metalinguistically' negated and ii) se-marked anticausatives trigger much stronger (or much more often) scalar implicatures than unmarked anticausatives. The latter would follow from the theory of scalar alternatives in Katzir (2010) (scalar alternatives can be morpho-syntactically activated) and a view on the syntax of semarked anticausatives in Schäfer (2008) and Alexiadou et al. (2015) (se-marked anticausatives, although semantically inchoative, are syntactically transitive in that SE acts as an expletive external argument).
The fact that even unmarked anticausatives triggered (however weaker) scalar implicatures in Norwegian (but almost none in English) is, we would suggest at this point, a priming effect; all Norwegian subjects were exposed to unmarked anticausatives and se-marked anticausatives in the same experimental session (including a number of se-marked semantically reflexive verbs). That is, all subjects were exposed to many se-marked structures which primed the accessibility of a transitive syntax, and in turn a transitive, causative alternative. Since English lacks marked anticausatives, a transitive syntax for anticausatives cannot be primed and in turn a strong anticausative implicature cannot be morpho-syntactically triggered.
(28) #Luisa no odia siquiera a los niños, los aborrece. Luisa no hates even to ACC the children them loathes 'Luisa doesn't (even) hate children (at all), she loathes them.' Below, we apply siquiera to our test case example (19), cf. (29). As (29a) shows, this NPI does not combine with the se-marked anticausative in such a setup. Crucially, exactly the same holds for other inchoative predicates such as unmarked anticausatives in (29b) as well as pure, i.e. non-alternating unaccusatives (29c) and combinations of an eventive copula with an adjective (29d). Since the latter two predicates do not have lexical causative counterparts, we use a periphrastic causative construction in the second clause of (29c) and an alternative causative verb in the second clause of (29d).
(29) a. #El vaso no se rompió siquiera, tú lo rompiste. the glass no se broke even you it broke 'The glass didn't (even) break, you broke it.' b. #Los precios no aumentaron siquiera, tú los aumentaste. the prices no increased even, you them increased 'The prices didn't (even) increase, you increased them.' c. #El rosal no floreció siquiera, el jardinero lo hizo florecer. the rosebush no blossomed even, the gardener it made blossom 'The rosebush didn't (even) blossom, the gardener made it blossom.' d. #El niño no se puso enfermo siquiera, tú lo infectaste.
the child no se get sick even, you him infected 'The child didn't (even) get sick, you infected him.' (29a-d) suggest that all the predicates in the first clause including se-marked anticausatives denote one-place change-of-state events that are entailed by their causative counterparts in the second clause. This follows under the standard account of the causative alternation, but not under the RAoAC. The latter predicts that se-marked anticausatives should behave like canonically reflexive verbs. However, these verbs behave differently, as exemplified in (30) for lavarse ('wash oneself'); they are compatible with the NPI, as predicted by (8a, b) (and wrongly by (9a, b) for marked anticausatives), since the negation can, and in fact must be interpreted 'logically'.
El niño no se lavó siquiera, lo lavó la niñera. the kid no se washed even him washed the nanny 'The kid didn't even wash, the nanny washed him.' The evidence from NPI licensing then argues against the RAoAC and in favor of the standard analysis of the causative alternation. However, we must also mention that, in practice, this test often leads to much less clear results than one would hope. To start with, it turns out to be quite difficult to identify NPIs that actually combine in a meaningful way with changeof-state predicates as well as with canonically reflexive verbs; we failed to identify such NPIs for Russian, Czech and Italian. Further, once such an NPI is identified, speakers often do not give fully consistent judgments. The problem has already popped up in the earlier literature discussing NPIs as a test case for the RAoAC. Horvath & Siloni (2011: 2180 report judgments that suggest that the Spanish NPI en absoluto ('at all') and its Hebrew counterpart cannot appear in examples such as (29)  In order to empirically check how our test environment (cf. 19) behaves in the context of NPIs, we set up two questionnaires. In particular, we tested the German NPI überhaupt ('at all') and the Norwegian NPI engang ('even') in the context of one se-marked anticausative and one se-marked reflexive verb. 19 Our questionnaires first presented an instruction for the judgment task including some comments about possible stress patterns, because we recognized that the test dialogues might appear strange without any intonational contour. The instructions were given in English (31a). Then a dialogue with our test sentences appeared in German and Norwegian respectively (31b). After that, the subjects had to judge the acceptability of the answer by speaker B, which involved the NPI (31c). We present the two German verbs and the results in (31) and (32) and the two Norwegian verbs in (33) and (34) The above results are surprising in so far, as the licensing of NPIs is typically characterized as a categorical phenomenon in the theoretical literature. Furthermore, the differences between the German and the Norwegian NPI are unexpected. 20 Nevertheless, there is a clear tendency in the above results: both NPIs are accepted more often with the canonically reflexive verbs than with the se-marked anticausatives. This runs counter to the predictions made by the RAoAC (the two verb classes should both license the NPI equally) while they go into the direction predicted by the standard analysis of the causative alternation (only canonically reflexive verbs should license the NPI). However, we would like to see further tests to show that the negation of anticausative clauses followed by the assertion of causative clauses is 'metalinguistically' interpreted. We turn to two such tests in the next sections. (For a further test besides the (non-)licensing of NPIs that shows, in our view convincingly, that the negation under consideration is indeed 'metalinguistic' negation, see Horvath & Siloni 2013: 223ff).

'Just'
Adverbs like English just or only are compatible with 'metalinguistic' negation, as we see in (35a) (e.g. Horn 1985: 142), where they make reference to the upper boundary of the scalar implicature by negating any stronger alternatives to the scalar expression used. Such adverbs are weird in the context of logical negation as in (35b)  The Spanish counterpart of 'just' is solo, the German counterpart is einfach (nur). As predicted by the standard analysis of the causative alternation, these adverbs are possible only in the context of se-marked anticausatives (and other inchoative one-place predicates of the type already tested in (29b-d) above), but not in the context of canonically reflexive verbs. We illustrate this in (36a, b) for German (see Schäfer
Corrective but2 adds a correction to a previously negated clause, where the negation either denies an assertion or an implicature (typically introduced by an earlier utterance). If, as in (37), the negation in the first clause denies an assertion ('logical' use of negation), but2 introduces an alternative assertion held to be true instead. If, as in (38), the negation in the first clause is 'metalinguistic' in that it negates a scalar implicature, but2 introduces this stronger statement. Note finally that but2 can easily be elided without any change in meaning.

(37)
Hans ist nicht reich, (sondern) er ist arm. Hans is not rich, but2 he is poor 'Pepe is not rich, but he is poor.' (38) Das Wasser ist nicht heiß, (sondern) es ist kochend heiß. the water is not hot but2 it is scalding hot 'The water is not hot, it is scalding.' Concessive but1 provides a very different conversational function. It contrasts two opposed arguments and states that the second argument weights stronger than the first (or at least as strong as the first; e.g. Winterstein 2013). More abstractly, the use of concessive but in 'X but Y' presupposes a certain question under discussion, such that X is an argument for one way of resolving the question, Y is an argument for an opposite way of resolving the question, and Y has more weight than (or at least equal weight as) X. The question under discussion is contextually determined. In the example in (39), a reasonable question could be whether one should buy the ring or not. The first conjunct provides an argument for a positive answer, the second conjunct provides an argument for a negative answer, and the second argument is considered stronger. In (40) the question under discussion might be whether it is a good decision to marry John, with an argument against and an argument in favor of this decision contrasted in the two conjuncts.
(42) a. Das Wasser ist nicht heiß, #aber / sondern es ist kochend heiß. the water is not hot but1 / but2 it is scalding hot 'The water is not hot, it is scalding.' b. Hans hat nicht einige Probleme gelöst, #aber/sondern er hat alle gelöst John has not some problems solved but1/but2 he has all solved 'John did not solve some problems, he solved all of them.' The availability of concessive but1 can then be used as a diagnostic as to whether a sentence involves the 'logical' use or the 'metalinguistic' use of negation.
This test reconfirms our earlier findings. The examples with se-marked anticausatives in (43a, b) behave like other inchoative predicates, unmarked anticausatives (44a, b), pure unaccusatives (45a) and combinations of the eventive copula werden ('become') with an adjective (45b). They do not license concessive but1, i.e. they involve a 'metalinguistic' use of negation. All these verbs differ thereby from canonical reflexive verbs (46a, b), which license concessive but1, as they involve 'logical' negation in our test set-up. a. Das Kind hat sich nicht gewaschen, aber/sondern die Mutter hat es gewaschen. the child has se not washed but1/but2 the mother has it washed 'The child did not wash, but the mother washed her.' b. Der Star hat sich nicht angezogen, aber/sondern sein Manager hat ihn angezogen. the star has se not dressed but1/but2 his manager has him dressed 'The star did not dress, but his manager dressed him.' Even though English does not overtly distinguish a corrective and a concessive conjunction (but can convey both uses), the above test can nevertheless be applied in this language (as well as in French, Norwegian or Italian). This is so because (as already shown in (37) and (38)) corrective clauses do not need to be introduced by a conjunction; furthermore, the corrective use of English but is syntactically restricted in that it cannot occur if but combines two full clauses. This is illustrated in (47a-c) from Horn (1985). While the first two examples allow a corrective interpretation where the first conjunct is objected to because its predicate is considered to be too weak, this is not possible in the third example where two full clauses are conjoined. Here only the concessive use of but is possible. The negation must then be interpreted 'logically' (cf. fn. 22) and the example is unacceptable; since everything scolding is also (at least) hot, it is contradictory to assert of anything that it is scalding but not hot.
The test then can be applied to English anticausatives and canonically reflexive verbs; as shown in (48a, b), the two verb classes behave exactly the same as in German (or Spanish). The presence vs. absence of the se-morpheme makes no difference.
(48) a. The vase did not break, (#but) you broke it. b. The child did not wash, (but) the mother washed her.
The same holds in languages with only one conjunction but and se-marked anticausative and canonically reflexive verbs such as Italian in (49a, b) 23 and Norwegian in (50a, b): 24 (49) a. Il bicchiere non si è rotto, (#ma) l'hai rotto TU! the glass not se is broken, (but) it-have broken you 'The glass did not break, you broke it!' b. Il bambino non si è lavato, (ma) l'ha lavato la BAMBINAIA! the child not se is washed, (but) him-have washed the baby.sitter 'The child did not wash, the baby sitter washed him!' (50) a. Vinduet åpna seg ikke, (#men) DU åpna det! window.def opened se not (but) you opened it 'The window did not open, you opened it!' b. Jenta har ikke vaska seg, (men) FAREN har vaska henne! girl.def has not washed se but father.def has washed her 'The girl did not wash, the father washed her!' To conclude, the (non-)licensing of concessive but1 clearly differentiates anticausative verbs (whether marked or unmarked) from canonically reflexive verbs in our test environment. The result shows that the negation in the examples involving the former class of verbs is interpreted as 'metalinguistic' negation, while it is interpreted logically with the latter class of verbs. In turn, this means that causative verbs entail their se-marked anticausative counterparts, as predicted by the standard analysis. Under the RAoAC, se-marked anticausatives are predicted to behave like canonically reflexive verbs, contrary to fact.
We want to add two comments about the test involving concessive but1. First, in our experience, judgments about the licensing of concessive and corrective but are much easier and much more robust than judgments about the licensing of NPIs. Note, however, that context can have a confusing effect. In particular, one has to make sure that subjects do not manipulate the examples in order to make concessive but1 acceptable with anticausatives. An easy way would be to add phrases like by itself. As will be discussed in section 5, an anticausative modified with by itself (and its counterparts in other languages) entails that the event denoted is not caused by any entity. That is, the implicature that normally comes with the use of an anticausative verb (instead of its causative counterpart) is turned into an entailment via the use of by itself. Consequently, negating an anticausative which is marked with by itself can no longer involve 'metalinguistic' negation, and concessive but is licensed ('The door did not open by itself, but you opened the door' is well formed across languages). 25 Second, the test is not applicable in all languages because not all languages lexicalize the concessive and corrective meaning space the same way. So while for example Russian has two conjunctions no and a, which, on the first view, seem to be very similar to German aber/sondern and Spanish pero/sino (que), a closer look shows that they work fundamentally differently. As Zeevat (2009) andJasinskaja (2010; show, Russian lacks a corrective coordination altogether and the function of English concessive but is partly taken over by no and partly by a, whereby the latter can sometimes also mean 'and'. Without going into details, these Russian conjunctions, then, cannot be used to diagnose any semantic difference between se-marked anticausatives and canonically reflexive verbs in our test environment.

Concessive adverbs
The concessive vs. corrective use of conjunctions like but can be replayed with adverbials as we exemplify below for Spanish, German (and English; see the translations of the examples).
Languages can use specific adverbs to introduce corrective and concessive clauses; these show the same distributional restrictions as concessive but1 and corrective but2 in the previous section. While sentences following logically negated statements allow both adverbs (51a, b), sentences following 'metalinguistically' negated statements allow adverbs introducing corrective clauses only (52a, b). 25 Lundquist et al. (ms.) observe another contextual effect and argue that it invalidates the test involving concessive conjunctions. They observe that, in particular contexts, concessive but1 is bad even with canonically reflexive verbs. That is, under the context given in their example in (i), canonically reflexive verbs behave as se-marked anticausatives in that they do not license concessive but1 anymore. From this, they conclude that the test is not valid.
(i) Scene: Juan, who has had a large beard for the last year, steps out of his office, all clean shaven. Me and his girlfriend Maria is outside his office: Me: Oh, I see Juan has shaved. Maria: No, Juan hasn't shaved, (#but) I shaved him.
This criticism is not well founded. The fact that a basically pragmatic test is context dependent does not invalidate the test. Furthermore, the unacceptability of Maria's statement in (i) follows immediately from the characterization given for concessive but1 in the literature. As mentioned above, concessive but presupposes a question under discussion and connects two statements that point to opposite resolvements of the question. The only reasonable question under discussion that can underly the above dialogue between the speaker and Maria is whether Juan still has a beard or not. But the context scene explicitly states that Juan does not have a beard anymore. Therefore, the use of concessive but in Maria's statement simply suffers from a presupposition failure.
Pepe not is intelligent more well /in time of that is rich b. Peter ist nicht intelligent. Vielmehr /stattdessen ist er reich. Peter is not intelligent much.more /instead.this is he rich 'Peter is not intelligent. Rather/Instead he is rich.' (52) a. El agua no está templada. {Más bien /#En vez de eso} está caliente. the water no is warm more well /in time of that is hot b. Das Wasser ist nicht warm. Vielmehr /#Stattdessen ist es heiß. the water no is warm much.more /instead.this is it hot 'The water is not warm. Rather/#Instead it is hot.' Applied to the negated test sentences familiar from the last section, we see that the negation qualifies, once again, as 'metalinguistic' negation in the case of se-marked anticausatives (54a, b), and as 'logical' negation in the case of canonically reflexive verbs (55a, b). the child has se not washed.
Vielmehr /Stattdessen hat die Tagesmutter es gewaschen. much.more /instead.this has the nanny it washed 'The child didn't wash. Rather/Instead the nanny washed him.' The test provides the same result in other languages. The relevant Italian adverbs are invece ('instead') and piuttosto ('rather') (p.c. Chiara Gianollo), and the televant Czech adverbs are místo toho ('instead') and spíš ('rather') (p.c. Ivona Kucerova and Petr Biskup). Norwegian, however, lacks a good translation of English rather (p.c. Terje Lohndal). And similarly to the case of conjunctions, Russian seems to have counterparts of rather and instead which, however, have a different distribution and cannot be used in our test environment (p.c. Ljudmila Geist).

A further downward entailing context: Conditionals
So far, we have tested the entailment relation between (se-marked) anticausatives and their causative counterparts via negation. Negation, being a downward entailing operator, licenses inferences from semantically weaker expressions (supersets) to semantically stronger expressions (subsets): From 'John does not run' we can infer 'John does not run fast'. As we have seen, however, the negation test faces a problem, namely the property of natural language negation to allow for a 'metalinguistic' use. Weak scalar predicates can be 'metalinguistically' negated and, at the same time, their stronger alternatives can be asserted in the subsequent discourse ('John does not (just) run, he runs fast'). In the previous sections, we spent quite some time to find ways to distinguish between 'logical' and 'metalinguistic' negation. As we showed, those diagnostics exist and they derive a consistent and clear picture. However, every other downward entailing expression should make our point. In this section, we apply, as a final diagnostic, conditional clauses, whose antecedent clauses are downward entailing: From 'If I eat a pizza, I get sick' one can infer 'If I eat a pizza with anchovies, I get sick'. 26 We present the test setup below in Spanish. A test sentence has two parts, cf. (56a, b). The conditional sentence in (56a) states that whenever an event of the type j-1 denoted by a VP headed by a se-marked anticausative occurs, then a result of the type w denoted by the VP in the embedded consequent occurs. This conditional is followed in (56b) by the assertion of an event j-2 expressed by a VP headed by the causative counterpart of the verb used in the conditional sentence before, and the negation of any episodic event of the type w. The test question then is whether the episodical clause is logically compatible with the preceding conditional. If yes, there is no entailment relation between the conditional clause headed by the anticausative verb and the expisodic clause headed by the causative verb; if no, there is such an entailment relation. It turns out that (56a) and (56b) are not compatible with each other. (56b) makes sentence (56a) necessarily false (or alternatively, provides a counterexample to the generalization expressed by the conditional). It follows that the sentence headed by the causative verb entails the sentence headed by the corresponding anticausative verb.
(56) a. Siempre que se hunde un barco, el gobierno envía un helicóptero de rescate. always that se sinks a boat, the goverment sends a helicopter of rescue 'Whenever a boat sinks, the goverment sends a recue helicopter.' b. Hoy, unos terroristas han hundido un barco y el gobierno no ha enviado today, someterrorists have sunk a ship and the goverment not has sent helicópteros helicopters 'Today, some terrorists sank a ship and the goverment hasn't sent any helicopter.' If we apply the test to canonically reflexive verbs as in (57a) and their transitive-disjoint counterparts as in (57b), we get the opposite result; the episodic sentence in the b-clause and the conditional in the a-clause can both be true in the same context. This shows that there is no entailment relation between the transitive disjoint use and the reflexive use of canonically reflexive verbs.
(57) a. Siempre que Juan se afeita, María está contenta always that Juan se shaves María is happy 'Whenever John shaves, Mary is happy.' b. Hoy el barbero ha afeitado a Juan, y María no está contenta today the barber has shaved to Juan and María not is happy 'Today the barber shaved John, and Mary is not happy.' This test should be easily applicable across languages. 27 To substantiate our judgments of the Spanish examples above, we applied it to German, Italian and Norwegian via online questionnaires as well as to Russian and Czech via email correspondence with a number of native speakers. We tested two se-marked anticausative verbs and two canonically reflexive verbs in each language. We present below only one test sentence and its result since the results were basically identical for verbs of the same type.
All sentences were preceded by the instruction in (58), and were followed by the two answers in (59a, b); speakers had to choose one of the given answers. (58) Assume that sentence b) is true. Does b) make a) necessarily false or not?
is true, then a) is not necessarily false.
Test sentence pairs are presented in (60) and (61) for German, in (62) and (63) for Norwegian, in (64) and (65) for Italian, in (66) and (67) for Russian and in (68) and (69) for Czech. We illustrate the test in each language first for a se-maked anticausative verb, and then for a se-reflexive verb. In the c-lines, we give the number of speakers that answered with (59i) and (59ii), respectively. a. Når gutten vasker seg, er moren fornøyd. when the.boy washes se, is the.mother happy 'When the boy washes, the mother is happy.' b. I dag har dagmammaen vasket ham, og moren var ikke fornøyd. in today has the.nanny washed him and the.mother was not happy 'Today, the nanny washed him, and the mother was not happy.' c. Results: necessarily false: 0; not necessarily false: 20 (64) a. Tutte le volte che un vetro si rompe, si arrabbia il boss. all the times that a glass se breaks, se angry.gets the boss 'Whenever a glass breaks, the boss gets angry.' b. Oggi Maria ha rotto un vetro, e il boss non si è arrabbiato today Maria has broken a glass, and the boss not se is angry.got 'Today, Mary broke a glass, and the boss did not get angry.' c. Results: necessarily false: 12; not necessarily false: 5 (65) a. Tutte le volte che il bambino si lava, la mamma è soddisfatta. all the times that the child se washes, the mother is happy 'Whenever the child washes, the mother is happy.' b. Oggi il bambinol'ha lavato la bambinaia,e la mammanon era soddisfatta. today the child him-has washed the baby-sitter and the mama not washappy 'Today, the babysitter washed the child, and the mother was not happy.' The data show that se-marked anticausatives are interpreted fundamentally differently than canonically reflexive verbs in all the languages under consideration. The results of the latter class are fully compatible with their reflexive semantics; canonically reflexive verbs are not entailed by their transitive-disjoint counterparts. The results of the semarked anticausatives are definitely not compatible with the RAoAC. In fact, 70% of the speakers clearly judge these examples as contradictions, as predicted under the standard analysis.
Does this mean that about 30% of our speakers interpret se-marked anticausatives as semantically reflexive so that they are not entailed by their causative counterparts? We do not think so. We rather believe that these 30% of 'no' answers are due to an imprecise experimental design; as one German speaker (that we talked to after the online questionnaire) and the three Russian speakers (via email) explained, they were aware of the fact that the b-sentence in (60) and (66b) were not in accordance with the statement in the a-sentences. However, they applied a weaker truth measure and considered the b-sentences as exception to the generalization stated in a-sentence, so that the a-sentence still expresses a true generalization. If this explanation can be generalized, then most, if not all, speakers felt that a-and b-sentences are not compatible in the case of se-marked anticausatives and their causative counterparts, as predicted by the standard theory. 28

SE-marked anticausatives followed by causatives
Since, under the RAoAC, a clause headed by a se-marked anticausative expresses that the theme of the change-of-state event is also the effector of this event, this analysis seems to predict that a sentence headed by a se-marked anticausative cannot be followed by a sentence headed by the corresponding causative with a distinct effector subject. However, as observed by Koontz-Garboden (2009) Koontz-Garboden (2009: 104f.) correctly points out that this prediction only holds under the assumption that one causing event cannot have more than one single effector. He argues that this is not necessarily the case. In particular, he proposes that one event can have more than one effector as long as the two effectors are sufficiently different, i.e. if they are not both agents, causers, or instruments. 29 In (70), the breaking event is then related to two effectors, the first being a non-agentive one (the glass) and the second an agentive one (Juan).
As stated, this hypothesis makes wrong predictions. On the one hand, se-anticausatives can very well be followed by causative clauses with non-agentive subjects as in (71a, b); in order to account for these examples, one would have to say that 'the glass' in (70) is an ontologically different effector than the natural forces in (71a, b). the man se killed of fact the bullet him killed 'The man killed himself. In fact, the bullet killed him'.
Once we consider that anticausatives form a scale with their corresponding causative verb, an alternative explanation for examples such as (70) comes to mind. Spanish adverbial phrases such as de hecho, English in fact or German genau genommen introduce continuing sentences which enrich the first sentence with further information. The example in (70) works quite similarly to the corresponding example involving 'metalinguistic' negation in (19) above. While 'metalinguistic' negation in (19) cancels the scalar implicature associated with the anticausative verb, so that the following causative clause can be asserted without leading to a contradiction, a similar job is done by de hecho in (70) (Winterstein 2008 calls phrases like in fact 'reformulative connectives'). This connective allows adding to the weak anticausative predication the stronger causative variant. This view fits with the observation that these phrases play the same role as 'metalinguistic' negation (cf. 73) rather than the one of 'logical' negation (cf. 74): Luisa odia a los niños. De hecho, los aborrece. Luisa hates to the children of fact them loathes 'Luisa hates children. In fact, she loathes them.
(74) #Pepe es rico. De hecho, es inteligente. Pepe is rich of fact is intelligent 'Pepe is rich. In fact, he is intelligent.'

Further entailments
The RAoAC in (8a, b) makes the prediction that there should be no synonymous pairs of se-marked anticausative verbs on the one hand and bare unaccusative verbs (i.e. those lacking a causative version) or combinations of an eventive copula ('become') with an 30 As a reviewer correctly points out, this idea also predicts pairs of sentences such as in (i) to be acceptable.
Under the standard semantics of the causative alternation and the observation that adverbials such as de hecho need to add further information, the unacceptability of (i) follows because the clause headed by the anticausative verb carries less information than the clause headed by the causative verb.
(i) #Juan/ el terremoto rompió el cristal. De hecho, el cristal se rompió. Juan/ the earthquake broke the glass of fact, the glass se broke '#Juan/the earthquake broke the glass. In fact the glass broke.' adjective on the other hand. For practical reasons, we illustrate both phenomena with German examples, showing that the prediction is wrong. 31 The two verbs sich öffnen and aufgehen mean basically the same ('to go open'). They differ, however, in that the former has a causative counterpart while the latter lacks a lexical causative variant. Peter has she opened 'The door did not open, (*but) Peter opened it.' Crucially, the two verbs are fully synonymous; however, the version of the RAoAC proposed by Koontz-Garboden (2009) would predict that the se-marked anticausative denotes a reflexive causative event and the simple unaccusative verb denotes a one-place inchoative event such that the former should entail the latter. Consequently, corrective but1 ('sondern') should be licensed in (77), which is not the case.
(77) #Die Tür ist nicht aufgegangen, aber/sondern sie hat sich geöffnet. the door is not open.gone but1/but2 she has se opened 'The door did not go open, (but) it opened.' Combinations of an eventive copula with an adjective as in (78a) clearly express a oneplace change of state event. The very same adjectival root can, however, also form the se-marked anticausative verb in (78b). As (79) shows, the two constructions are synonymous; since the former arguably expresses a simple one-place change of state event, we can conclude that the se-marked anticausative does so, too.
(78) a. Das Klima wurde anders. the climate became different b. Das Klima änderte sich. the climate changed se 'The climate changed.' (79) #Das Klima ist nicht anders geworden, aber/sondern es hat sich verändert. the climate is not different become, but1/but2 it has se changed 'The climate did not get different, (but) it changed.' 31 Note that there are more German verbal pairs of the first type, and almost every deadjectival change-ofstate verb has a corresponding 'become+adjective' variant in German. However, in other languages, the combination 'become+adjective' is often, though not always, blocked by the corresponding deadjectival verbs. The reason for this difference between German and many other languages is unknown to us. Note finally that optionally marked anticausatives available in many languages make the same point if we reject the option of zero-reflexivization (cf. fn. 9 and the main text following this footnote).
the child se burnt 'The kid got burnt/burnt itself.'

The licensing of by-itself
In this last section, we address a final prominent argument brought up in favor of the RAoAC and originally due to Chierchia (2004), namely the licensing of by itself and its counterparts in other languages (e.g. Italian da sé, Spanish sí mismo, German von selbst) Chierchia's argument runs as follows (see also Koontz-Garboden 2009). In (84), da sé is successfully bound by an agent subject. In (85), the subject is not an agent, and modification with da sé is claimed to be bad. Finally, in passives such as (86) the derived theme subject cannot license da sé.
Gianni knows the Latin/ has sweated by himself 'Gianni knows Latin/sweat by himself.' (86) * La porta è stata aperta da sé. the door is been opened by itself 'The door was opened by itself.' Chierchia concludes from this set of data that da sé must be bound by a structural subject, and that this subject must have the theta role agent or causer. Furthermore, he proposes that this phrase expresses that its antecedent is the sole causer/only agent of the event expressed by the lexical verb. Crucially, anticausatives are compatible with da sé, cf. (87). Chierchia takes this as a confirmation for the RAoAC: since (87) is good, la porta, the antecedent of da sé, must be a causer (in addition of being a theme).
(87) La porta si è aperta da sé. the door se is opened by itself 'The door opened by itself.' Why should the antecedent of da sé be the sole causer? This would follow from the observation that a simple anticausative clause can be followed by a clause introducing a (further) causer for the inchoative event, while this is impossible if the anticausative is modified with da sé, as illustrated for English in (88a, b).
(88) a. The door opened. In fact, I opened the door. b. The door opened by itself. #In fact, I opened the door.
A number of authors have argued against the idea that the distribution of da sé and its counterparts in other languages should be taken as an argument in favor of the RAoAC, in particular that it can be used to diagnose the presence of an agent or causer (see Reinhart 2000: 28;Schäfer 2007;Horvath & Siloni 2011;. Recently, Alexiadou et al. (2015) explicitly argued that neither the distribution nor the interpretation of these phrases fit the above characterization given by Chierchia (2004); neither is the antecedent of da sé necessarily an agent or causer, nor is it necessarily the sole causer. Before we turn to some

Conclusions
We argued on the bases of conceptual and empirical arguments that the reflexivization analysis of anticausatives (whether they are reflexively marked or plain, i.e. unmarked) cannot be upheld, thereby reconfirming a conclusion already defended in Horvath & Siloni (2011;. All these arguments are, on the other hand, compatible with the standard view on the semantics of the causative alternation according to which anticausatives express one-place inchoative events and their lexical causative counterparts introduce a further argument, which causes the anticausative event. In particular, our empirical tests showed that a clause headed by a causative verb entails the clause headed by the corresponding anticausative verb, i.e. that causatives and anticausatives form a scale. This scalar relationship can explain many arguments brought forward in favor of the RAoAC; a clause headed by an anticausative verb can be negated, and a clause headed by the corresponding causative verb can be asserted at the same time, because the negation involved in the former clause necessarily has a 'metalinguistic' use, where the upper scalar implicature associated with anticausative verb is negated. Similarly, by itself appears happily with anticausatives, where this phrase expresses as an entailment what is otherwise just implied by an anticausative verb. However, we also stressed that the morphological string of a se-marked anticausative verb can be forced into a semantically reflexive construal (either by conceptual or by grammatical clues). Our results reinforce the standard view that se-morphemes used in many Indo-European languages to mark verbal derivations do not always act as an anaphor or reflexivizer.