Difficulty

An Experiencer has an easy or difficult time carrying out an Activity. The ease or difficulty associated with the Activity seems to often be associated with a prominent participant. However, we consider this impression to be due to the syntax and pragmatics of the relevant sentence constructions and employ no special FE for such participants. The Degree of ease or difficulty is often specified as well as a set of Circumstances. A Parameter may be mentioned that indicates in which respect the Activity is judged to be easy or difficult. Unmarked LUs of this frame indicate that something is easy, while LUs of this frame that mean the opposite of easy are marked with the semantic type "Negative", as in difficult.a, arduous.a, and a bitch.n. (1) John is easy to please. (2) It is easy to get Alex annoyed. (3) Smithers is very tough for me to please. (4) VWs are easy to repair. (5) The dating of western sculpture is difficult. (6) In that kind of wind the course is physically very tricky. (7) The last question on the exam was hard. (8) The last one was a hard question to answer.