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What are the different ways to produce nouns from other parts of speech and
how are they different?

For example, 高い has these nouns produced from it:

  * 高さ

  * 高み

For 近い :

  * 近く

Also nouns can be formed by adding もの or こと to verbs in 終止形 and 連用形:

  * 笑い物 (using 連用形)

  * 笑い事 (using 連用形)

  * 笑うこと (using 終止形)

And also from just the 連用形:

  * 笑い

* * *

What is the difference in:

  1. the type of nouns formed between ~さ, ~み and ~く .

  2. between [Verb-連用形]＋もの and [Verb-連用形]+こと?

  3. between [Verb-終止形]+こと and [Verb-連用形]

What are the other ways to produce nouns that are useful to know?

Like adding 主義 for example:

  * 資本(capital) turns into 資本主義(capitalism).
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-12-01T15:00:54.460
3880
2011-12-02T06:10:30.343
2011-12-01T17:56:40.077
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542
question
grammar nouns
The different ways of producing nouns
1. The affix `く` is used with i-adjectives in normal conditions. The exceptions (when `く` is not used) is when an i-adjective is used for compounding or in the plain non-past form, which ends with `い`. `さ` is known as an affix generally used to change an i-adjective or na-adjective into a noun. `み` is an affix that idiocyncratically attaches to some i-adjectives that it particularly selects. It only attaches to some selected i-adjectives and its meaning tends to be idiosyncratic, as contrasted to nouns created by `さ`.

  2. What is traditionally called 連用形 is, in modern linguistic point of view, nothing more than a mere verb stem (followed by an epenthetic vowel `i` in case of a consonant ending verb (五段動詞)). Verb stems seem to be able to be used as a noun. Particularly, what you are mentioning here is actually `verb-stem + もの` or `verb-stem + こと`, and these are compounds. Therefore, their meaning is idiosyncratic, and cannot be derived systematically. You have to look into the differences between `verb-stem + もの` and `verb-stem + こと` case by case.

  3. `終止形 + こと` is a noun phrase headed by the formal noun `こと` with an appositive clause. It can generally be translated as `the fact that ...`, `the event that ....`, etc.
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2011-12-01T23:44:56.413
3885
2011-12-02T06:10:30.343
2011-12-02T06:10:30.343
3880
answer