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


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.




This に is not a location marker. In [this article about the particle
に](http://japanese.about.com/library/weekly/aa090901a.htm):

> **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](http://www.lingua.tsukuba.ac.jp/ippan/TWPL0/TWPL05_31/2_meng2012.pdf).

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

