From a prescriptive viewpoint, it is incorrect to use soo da with a noun as in ii hito soo da 'seem to be a nice person'; however, this expression cannot be rephrased with other evidential forms such as yoo da, mitai da and rashii, as these lack an intuitive meaning that soo da carries. Through a questionnaire survey, this study looked at which of these forms would actually be chosen by native speakers and advanced learners of Japanese in a context where they intuitively state that someone seems to be a nice person. The result has shown that a large majority of the native speakers chose soo da, implying that ii hito soo da is indeed an established expression; in contrast, the learners’ selectivity of soo da turned low, suggesting that they might be unaware of the same expression.
