[Lexicog] Deductions - mind or emotions

[Hayim Sheynin]

Dear John,

I am a native speaker of Russian. I think in Russian this feel/think/believe phrase
would be expessed "mne kazhetsja" (It seems to me). This will fit all your nuances.  By the way the use  of "I believe" for such meaning would be strange to a Russian, because  the Russian parallel  of  this  verb  "Ja  verju"  usually  reserved for the meanings expressing either credo (I believe in God, or in eternal life) of somebody  who states that he agrees with the interlocutor (like I believe you).  

Hayim Sheynin

John Roberts <dr_john_roberts at sil.org> wrote:                               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
 
 
     
                               


Dr. Hayim Y. Sheynin
       
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