Does this に particle affect the whole phrase?


I am confused about this sentence I found.

`しかし彼が悪いヤツにはどうしても思えないのだ。`

My take would be that に is used for an adverbial construction similar to
"疑問に思う". So would "悪いヤツに思う" mean having a "bad-guy" feeling? Referring to
[this question](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/72511/uses-
of-%E3%81%AB%E6%80%9D%E3%81%86-in-this-statement) asked before, you would use
the を particle to mark the object you are having the feelings about, but it's
が instead. Could に by itself encapsulate the whole phrase before it, i.e.,
"彼が悪いヤツ"? Or is there a part which is being omitted?




A good question. Actually the answer is, we never say 彼が悪いヤツに **思う** though we
do say 彼が悪いヤツに **思える**. The construction rightly means "he seems a bad guy".

思える in this sentence is not the potential form of 思う, confusingly, it is
[another verb](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E6%80%9D%E3%81%88%E3%82%8B/)
that describes perceptory appearance.

Similarly,

> 彼が悪いヤツに見える _He looks like a bad guy_  
>  彼が悪いヤツに聞こえる _It sounds like he is a bad guy_  
>  彼が悪いヤツに感じられる _He is felt like a bad guy_

It'd be ungrammatical if you swap the verb with 見る or 聞く, which takes senser
as subject. Among them 感じられる _is_ made from 感じる, which does not have an
independent counterpart. This is done by a relatively rare grammar known as 自発
"spontaneous" -れる. You can also replace 思える in the first sentence with 思われる.

If you want to add information about senser in these kind of expression, such
as "to me", the standard way is to put a 私には in the front.

> 私には彼が悪いヤツに思える




A good question. Actually the answer is, we never say 彼が悪いヤツに **思う** though we
do say 彼が悪いヤツに **思える**. The construction rightly means "he seems a bad guy".

思える in this sentence is not the potential form of 思う, confusingly, it is
[another verb](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E6%80%9D%E3%81%88%E3%82%8B/)
that describes perceptory appearance.

Similarly,

> 彼が悪いヤツに見える _He looks like a bad guy_  
>  彼が悪いヤツに聞こえる _It sounds like he is a bad guy_  
>  彼が悪いヤツに感じられる _He is felt like a bad guy_

It'd be ungrammatical if you swap the verb with 見る or 聞く, which takes senser
as subject. Among them 感じられる _is_ made from 感じる, which does not have an
independent counterpart. This is done by a relatively rare grammar known as 自発
"spontaneous" -れる. You can also replace 思える in the first sentence with 思われる.

If you want to add information about senser in these kind of expression, such
as "to me", the standard way is to put a 私には in the front.

> 私には彼が悪いヤツに思える

