[Lexicog] Deductions - mind or emotions

[John Roberts]

I am in Korea at the moment teaching a linguistics course at HanDong 
University. Yesterday (here) one of my Korean colleagues said something 
to me in English that set off a train of thought about how we express 
deduction in English and other languages.

My colleague said "I feel you do not know the way to the faculty 
building." In my mind (not my heart) I flagged this up as a 
collocational clash of "feel" with "know". As a native English speaker I 
would never use "feel" in this context, I would use "think" or "believe" 
to express my deduction. But then I thought, maybe for other native 
speakers of English it would be OK to say "I feel you do not know the 
way to the faculty building." Maybe it is a male/female thing. The 
Korean colleague who said this is female. Or another possibility is that 
it is a politeness thing. Maybe the person who said this is wanting to 
weaken the judgement by using "feel" instead of "think".

Anyway, are there any native English speakers out there who think/feel 
that "I feel you do not know the way to the faculty building" is good 
grammatical English?

Are there any nonnative English speakers out there who think/feel that 
"I feel you do not know the way to the faculty building" is good 
grammatical English?

I would be interested to know how a deduction is expressed in other 
languages. Would you use the equivalent of "think" in English to express 
this or the equivalent of "feel"?

John Roberts




 
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