How to understand what preposition is associated with what meaning? [closed]

Question

I have difficulty in understanding what preposition, after a verb, is associated with what meaning, and how interchangeable prepositions are.

For example, Merriam-Webster reports the following meaning for difficulty:

1. the quality or state of being hard to do, deal with, or understand : the quality or state of being difficult

Example:

has difficulty reading

So it looks like the form is "to have difficulty doing something".

Another meaning is:

3. : objection

Example:

made no difficulty in granting the request

So for this case the form is "have difficulty in doing something".

Can I use this form for meaning 1?

Can I say "has difficulty in reading"?

EDIT: What I mean is this. "going to" something and "going away from" something have two different meanings. If the dictionary assign "difficulty in doing something" to meaning 3 (objection), how can I know that I can use this construction also for meaning 1 (hard to do)?

Answer 1

Yes , you can, and, what is more you can also use another preposition: "with".

• backwardness in reading: Thus in examining a child who cannot read , or who has extreme difficulty in reading , it is advisable first to ascertain whether his speech is , or has been , in any way defective , or whether he has been unusually slow in speech ...

• Reading Under Control: Teaching Reading in the Primary Schoolbooks.google.fr › books· Traduire cette page Judith Graham, ‎Alison Kelly : However, central to all definitions, the difficulty with reading is widely acknowledged. The British Psychological Society locates the reading-related difficulty at 'word' level: Dyslexia is evident when accurate and fluent word reading ...

To ascertain further these facts you might peruse the following pages: difficulty in reading, difficulty with (corresponding ngrams: 1, 2)

The multiple possibilities a preposition affords is not a truly grammatical question; it is more a matter of semantics and pure usage. Common sense is often a guide, and sometimes usage is so realized that a given preposition is used in various contexts. The upshot of this situation is that you have to verify the prepositions in a dictionary, which, avowedly, is not always helpful. Nowadays, there the additional help provided by ngrams and their associated pages of examples; those should not be neglected, although they must be used with care; hchecking the use that has been made of this new tool in the present answer, you will easily convince yourself of the well founded of this contention.