Direct objects

The direct objects express the semantic role patient, that is, the participant affected by the transitive situation. In Ancient Greek, the case of the direct object is prototypically the accusative. However, on the basis of a scalar hypothesis of transitivity, the notion of affectedness may be conceived of as a gradual property of the objects. In this perspective, different ways of encoding the transitive objects may be individuated, namely the dative and the genitive, which should be interpreted as less typical instances of the category.