Whether it's correct to say he is easy to get angry?
My confusion is that if there are any grammatical rules or limitation on the logical subject of infinitive, adjective-wise maybe?
I know these work:
He is happy to do something
something is easy to do
How about?
he is easy to get angry
I know most people would say he gets angry easily. I just wonder if there are fixed logic behind as in sentences of the first kind being used to describe how a person feel about doing something and the second for judgment of something .
- He is easy to get angry.
is grammatical, but it doesn't mean the same as
- He gets angry easily.
Get angry just means 'become angry',
but get X angry, with some person X named, means 'make X become angry'.
With an extra participant, get becomes a causative verb, not just an inchoative -- it means 'cause to become', not just 'become'.
OK, that's one construction; now for the easy construction. Easy, like tough, hard, a cinch, difficult, simple, and many similar predicates, undergoes the minor rule called Tough-Movement, which relates two sentences by "raising" the object of the verb in the complement clause to become the subject of the main clause:
-
(For Bill) To explain the missing statue was tough.
=== tough-movement ===> - The missing statue was tough (for Bill) to explain.
The thing about tough-movement is that it applies to the Object of the downstairs clause (this problem), not the subject (Bill, with or without the complementizer for)
- This problem was hard for Bill to solve.
- *Bill was hard to solve this problem
and that it only applies to certain predicates. Other, similar, predicates produce ungrammatical sentences.
- This problem was hard/easy to solve.
- This problem was impossible to solve.
- *This problem was possible to solve.
- *This problem was probable/improbable to solve.
So, that's why He is easy to get angry doesn't mean he gets angry easily; it already means something else.