A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF PRIMARY AUXILIARY VERBS IN CHINUA ACHEBE'S ARROW OF GOD
Keywords:
Auxiliary Verbs, Grammar, Primary Auxiliary Verbs, Declaratives, Interrogatives and PassivisationAbstract
This study conducts a systemic functional analysis of primary auxiliary verbs in Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God (1964). Using a qualitative research design and purposive sampling, the study uses secondary data to examine instances of be, have and do. The study analyses twelve (12) purposively selected extracts from chapters one (1), two (2), three (3), four (4), eight (8), nine (9), and twelve (12). The selected extracts comprised four (4) declarative constructions, four (4) interrogative constructions and four (4) passive constructions. The analysis was anchored on Halliday`s Introduction to Systemic Functional Grammar (fourth edition, 2014). The findings reveal that primary auxiliary verbs function significantly in declarative, interrogative and passive constructions. In declaratives, they operate as the finite element of the mood structure to assert or negate facts, express certainty and convey habitual actions or general truths. In interrogatives, they serve as a pivotal tool for the speech function of demanding information, confirmation and clarification. Finally, passive constructions demonstrate how auxiliaries shift the thematic focus from the Actor to the affected participant, thereby giving prominence, and emphasis to the affected participant.
References
Achebe, C. (1964). Arrow of God. Heinemann.
Alagbe, A. A. (2009). The English Primary Auxiliary Verbs: A Linguistic Theoretical Exercise. African Research Review, 3(2), 56–65.
Babalola, J. (2022). Auxiliary verbs. In Tool Kit (pp. 248–253).
Betti, M. J. (2022). Verbs and Auxiliaries in English. University of Thi-Qar.
Fema, B. M., Shuaibu, H., & Abubakar, A. (2020). The Auxiliary Verbs and Their Functions: An Overview. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 25(4), 1–6.
Greenbaum, S., & Nelson, G. (2013). An Introduction to English Grammar (3rd ed.). Routledge.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2014). Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar (4th ed.). Routledge.
Hayat, M., & Mehnaz. (2015). Importance of the Usage of Multiple Auxiliary Verbs in English Language in the Corpus Approach/Group Learning of the Students of Bachelor Level in District Kohat. Journal of Applied Environmental and Biological Sciences, 5(3), 221–228.
Iqbal, M. A. (2023). An Analysis of Auxiliary Verbs on the Jakarta Post Online Newspaper (Undergraduate Thesis, Jambi University).
Twaddell, W. F. (1963). The English Verb
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, adaptation, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors are permitted to post their work online in institutional/disciplinary repositories or on their own websites. Pre-print versions posted online should include a citation and link to the final published version in Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication as soon as the issue is available; post-print versions (including the final publisher's PDF) should include a citation and link to the journal's website.
