third-person desire restriction

Japanese restricts direct desire forms (~たい, ~ほしい) to the speaker's own emotions — using them for someone else's mind would presume mind-reading. Third-person desires are routed through perception/cognition verbs: ~たがる ('show signs of wanting'), ~たいと思っている ('thinks they want'), ~てほしいと思っている ('thinks they want X to happen'). A grammaticalized empathy marker.