[Tlhingan-hol] "I don't always..."

[SuStel]

On 12/5/2015 5:11 PM, De'vID wrote:
> There's an Internet meme that goes "I don't always X, but when I do, I
> Y". It's based on an ad campaign for Dos Equis beer, where the phrase
> goes "I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis".
>
> How would you render "I don't always drink beer"? It seems to be
> negating an adverbial.

Well, adverbials have been negated by verbs before, as in {Hoch 
DaSopbe'chugh batlh bIHeghbe'} "eat everything or you will die without 
honor." So we might be able to get away with {reH HIq vItlhutlhbe'}. 
(I'm not going to try to distinguish beer from any other kind of alcohol 
for the purposes of this discussion.)

We also know that adverbials can be reversed with {-Ha'}, although there 
is no formal rule that does this. We haven't seen an instance of 
{reHHa'}, but one might conjecture {reHHa' HIq vItlhutlh}.

A definitely legal way to say this might be {reH HIq vItlhutlh 'e' 
vItem} "I deny that I always drink alcohol."

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/