From what I can tell, 一个年 is completely wrong because you can never use a classifier together with 年. The situation is different from a phrase like 一个朋友.

My question is why! Is there a reason why is different from like this? Are there other nouns which behave like 年?

Or is 年 really syntactically more like 个; is 年 actually usable as a measure word? Can you for example say 一年时间 or 两年工作?

From what I can tell, 一个年 is completely wrong because you can never use a classifier together with 年. The situation is different from a phrase like 一个朋友.

My question is: why? Is there a reason why 年 is different from 朋友 like this? Are there other nouns which behave like 年?

Or is 年 really syntactically more like 个? Is 年 actually usable as a measure word? Can you for example say 一年时间 or 两年工作?