Some remarks on the accusative in Old Persian

The most important functions of the accusative in Old Persian are consistent with those in other ancient Indo-European languages: it marks the direct object of transitive verbs, and can express the spatial notions of goal and path, as well as the temporal notion of duration. Besides these functions, there are other, in some way ‘rare’ or ‘particular’ occurrences of the Old Persian accusative that have not yet been explained, or not explained convincingly. This paper aims to investigate two interesting uses of the accusative: the double accusative construction and the mām kāma construction. The following conclusions are reached regarding the semantic roles and the functions of the accusative case in the constructions under consideration: a) a higher degree of affectedness may account for the use of the double accusative in ditransitives with some classes of verbs; b) the mām kāma construction, in turn, is a construction with a modal function, and there are some indications that in this instance the accusative could be a non-canonical subject.