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Many English words have their definitions change depending on their parts of
speech:

"type" (noun) = classification of something. (verb) = to peck-away as a
keyboard.  
"blue" (noun) = a color. (adj) = depressed, melancholy.  
...

But, in the case of Japanese、are there any nouns that can also function as
another part of speech? サ変動詞 do not count.
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2013-09-26T16:45:45.230
12948
2013-09-26T17:31:37.290
2013-09-26T16:51:08.307
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question
nouns
are there nouns that can function as another part of speech?
To some degree, 形容動詞 can flip between nouns and adjectives, but this is
largely due to the fact that the morphology is nearly identical (the one
difference is である vs な for modifying other nouns). There is also a very small
number of loan nouns that already look like verbs and so are slangishly used
as verbs (e.g. ググル＞ググる).

Beyond those, zero-derivation pretty much never happens. The reason for this
is primarily the fact that most kinds of words are required to have a certain
form even in an uninflected state - for example, verbs have to end with -u
(and the number of consonants before that is restricted, you can't have -yu),
形容詞 have to end in -Vi, etc. This is why する has to be added to most nouns to
make verbs - not because it's required to explicitly mark nouns being used as
verbs, but because most nouns can't be used as verbs as they lack the proper
form.

(also, your English examples aren't really the best - something better might
be 'table', where the noun and verb definitions are clearly related (i.e. it's
not just homophony, like 'type' and 'type').)
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2013-09-26T17:31:37.290
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2013-09-26T17:31:37.290
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answer