TRANSITIVITY IN PROVERBS IN ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART

Abstract

This paper shows how transitivity can be used to classify verbs and clauses through many processes in Achebe’s proverb in (Things Fall Apart. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) was adopted as the theoretical framework. Its aim is to clarify the meaning of proverbs beyond a literary work. The paper focused on “transitivity†in ideational metafunction in analyzing the verbs according to the different process types. The researcher employed a qualitative design because the data is displayed in the form of string of words. The analysis was done in line with the adopted theoretical framework. The study revealed that the transitivity system can analyze clauses as expressed in proverbs effectively. Again, the author made the most use of material process type. This shows that action words were mostly used in the proverbs.