Linguistic empathy in

theoretical linguistics Theoretical linguistics is a term in linguistics which, like the related term general linguistics, can be understood in different ways. Both can be taken as a reference to theory of language, or the branch of linguistics which inquires into the ...

is the "point of view" in an anaphoric utterance by which a participant is bound with or in the event or state that he/she describes in that sentence. An example is found with the

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

verbs ''yaru'' and ''kureru''. These both share the same essential

meaning Meaning most commonly refers to: * Meaning (linguistics), meaning which is communicated through the use of language * Meaning (philosophy), definition, elements, and types of meaning discussed in philosophy * Meaning (non-linguistic), a general te ...

and

case frame Case grammar is a system of linguistic analysis, focusing on the link between the valence, or number of subjects, objects, etc., of a verb and the grammatical context it requires. The system was created by the American linguist Charles J. Fillm ...

. But they differ in that ''yaru'' expresses when the action is looked at from the point of view of the referent of the subject or the neutral (objective) point of view, whereas ''kureru'' is used when the event is described from the point of view of the referent of the dative object. While present in many languages including

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national id ...

it is particularly prominent in some, such as Japanese. The concept has no connection with

empathy Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference, that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Definitions of empathy encompass a broad range of social, cog ...

in terms of attributing mental states to others or sympathizing with their situation.

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

{{reflist Pragmatics Syntactic relationships Tasks of natural language processing