[Lexicog] Deductions - mind or emotions

[Wayne Leman]

John, this isn't an answer, but also part of the discussion here could be included:

"I sense ..."

I recall that Nepali (verb-final language) has a set of verb-final evidentials which mark things such as whether the evidence was obtained by seeing, etc. I forget if feeling is one of the senses that is marked by that evidential system.

Of course, talking about cognition in English is not handled only by "think". We also indicate our thinking by "see." I sense (!) that "feel" is also included as a way to address cognition.

Wayne
-----
Wayne Leman
Cheyenne dictionary online:
http://cheyenne.110mb.com

  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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