The phenomena
The basic idea of linguistic empathy is that sentences can provide information about the speaker's point of view, from which they describe a state of affairs. This information can be expressed as concerning the speaker's identification with a participant", "camera angle", and "point of view". For example, in English, "then John hit his brother" is more acceptable than "then John's brother was hit by him". The former shows the speaker's empathy with John is greater than with his brother (John's brother). In contrast, in the latter, John's brother is the subject and him (John) is the by-agent. Thus, since the speaker's empathy with the subject, John's brother, is less than with him (John), then John's brother was hit by him is less acceptable than the former phrase. ==References==