johnbent
commented
1 year ago jimgeselbracht@yahoo.com replied,
Can I get some feedback from the group on this. Does what I have written make sense?
While not documented (that I have seen) in the Palauangrammar book, an “i” may be added to certain demonstratives to provide emphasis [1],and these emphasized words are found in many of songs. For example, tia is changed to itiato provide emphasis for this particular thing. This is commonly used in songs in the phrase itiael renguk [this heart of mine] (see, e.g., Adidil e ng Kebesengei#2). The emphasis may also come at theend of the word such as aika [these] changed to aikai. A very common phrase in Palauan songs is aikaikid a lengelek er kau [these are my tears for you] (see,e.g., 4:30 #2). Appending the emphasizing“i” is also demonstrated in the phrase tilechai a renguk el diobengkem [that is my heart that just accompanies you] from the song Dider a Sechou.
The practice of adding an “i” for emphasis can apparentlyalso be used for pronouns. For example, fivesongbooks that contained the song “Doki Doki” wrote the first personnon-emphatic pronoun as “yak” (which I spell “iak”), apparentlyto emphasize that I remained: e iak kililei mak bai dilu klmesmechek. Yoichi Rengiil, in his song Oh! Somebody MeKeleng Saingo uses the phrase kaui a uchul e ak morolung [youare the reason that I am leaving].
In the previous examples where the emphasizing “i” isadded at the end of the word, it may instead be that the “i” should beadded to the connecting word “a” to form “ia” to provide emphasisto the word that follows, especially when that word is a noun. For example, Yoichi Rengiil explained to methat in the line from the song Did er a Sechou that states “e iarebldekek te ngar keltang” [my ancestors, where are they?] the “ia” putsemphasis on the singer’s ancestors. Yoichi used a similar construction in Oh! Somebody with the line e iaotoko a di mlo ikrii [and then the manjust turned his back on her].
[1] This was confirmed byMasaharu Tmodrang in March 2020.
Adding "i" for emphasis created by jimgeselbracht@yahoo.com on 2021-01-19 14:19:49