With awakened being a transitive verb requiring a direct object, in the sentence
He was awakened by a loud crash.
is “he” both the direct object and the subject of the sentence?
The sentence was given in this answer as an example of “awakened” as a transitive verb with a direct object. When I looked at it, as if to conjugate, I saw "he" as the subject, so not a direct object, but passive.
The question has some false presuppositions, which lead to confusion.
To start with,
With awakened being a transitive verb requiring a direct object
is not true. Awaken is a causative/inchoative verb, meaning either come to be awake (inchoative)
or cause to come to be awake (causative).
Only the causative is transitive, and therefore only the causative can be passivized.
Second, no word can be both the subject and the object of a clause unless it's repeated or reflexive
What you appear to be asking about is the Passive construction.
The Passive changes the subject and object specifications for a clause. In the original transitive clause, there is a subject NP (call it A) and an object NP (call it B). In the Passive transformation of the clause, B becomes the transformed subject NP and A is either deleted (most of the time) or stuck at the end in an agent by phrase (occasionally), viz:
A; DO = Mary = B)B; A deleted)B; A in by-phrase) The mistake is in thinking of a phrase as always being the subject or the object of a clause, even when the clause is transformed.
Grammatical relations like "subject" and "object" are likely to change under transformations, whereas semantic relations (like "agent", "patient", or "receiver") don't change under transformations. And Passive is a transformation that always changes grammatical relations.
In passive constructions, the grammatical subject of the sentence (here, he) is the entity acted upon, not the entity doing the action.
He was awakened by a loud noise. passive
A loud noise awakened him. active
When awaken is transitive it means "to cause someone to become awake". You can awaken a sleeping person.
Awaken can be used either transitively or intransitively.
In passive voice, transitive verbs can be used without a direct object, because the thing the verb acts upon becomes the subject. Note, however, that as John Lawler pointed out in the comments, sometimes the indirect object can become the subject, in which case the verb will still take a direct object.
However, only transitive verbs can be converted to passive voice, which means that, even though they may no longer be shown with a direct object in passive voice, verbs that are used in passive voice are always transitive.
Edit: I have to walk back my statement somewhat. Sometimes the object of a preposition can also be used as the subject in passive constructions, and then intransitive verbs can be in the passive voice, too. For example, the verb to laugh is always intransitive, but it's possible to use it in a passive construction, as follows:
Active: Everyone laughed at him.
Passive: He was laughed at.
When an intransitive verb is used in a passive construction, it will be followed by a preposition. When a transitive verb in used in a passive construction, it won't.
In the end, though, if you're trying to illustrate a point about transitivity, I would generally suggest not illustrating it with an example in passive voice. I think it makes it much harder to understand.
