Other uses of the particle に in お兄ちゃんには見つからない

Question

I'm reading a story and two siblings are playing 'hide and seek'. The younger one, after finding a hiding place, says:

ここならお兄ちゃんには絶対に見つからないよ

ここなら means 'if here' that is, from the context, 'if I hide in here...'

The rest of the sentence, I can tell, have the general meaning of "if I hide in here, my brother will absolutely not find me". But breaking down the sentence to pieces... what is the role of お兄ちゃんには? お兄ちゃん is not a location so に has little sense (to me) when applied to it.

What's going on?

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

This に is not a location marker. In this article about the particle に:

Source

"Ni" indicates an agent or a source in passive or causative verbs. It translates into "by" or "from".

• 母にしかられた。 I was scolded by my mother.
• トムに英語を教えてもらった。 I was taught English by Tom.

The verb in question, 見つかる, is categorized as a passive-like verb (受動詞) by some linguists, and it functions as if it were passive even though there is no れる/られる. Such verbs include (but are not limited to):

• ～に見つかる　to be found by ～
• ～に教わる　to be taught by ～
• ～に捕まる　to be caught by ～
• ～に負ける　to be defeated by ～
• ～に破れる　to be defeated by ～
• ～に知れる　to come to be known to ～

List taken from this article.

Practically, I think you can forget the grammatical term and just memorize that these verbs always take に.