CalifJimYour question opens up a good many sticky points in the terminology. Do we (Can we) talk about certain structures by naming them without regard to their function in context? Or not? Probably not. Is love a noun or a verb? Only context will tell.
Hmm... this seems to be another case of varying terminology. I have no objection to calling a participle an adjective, I'm just not used to that. Nor am I used to many other grammatical terms used here, like "a noun phrase". Don't get me wrong! I certainly don't mean there's anything wrong with it or that it is worse or better than the terms I am used to. I just had never heard it before I hit these forums. I can guess at the meaning of such expressions, of course.
The terminology must sometimes be confusing to learners whose native languages are so different from English that they don't even have verbs, let alone participles or gerunds!
I can't start using terms I am not familiar with and thus I use the terms I learned to use in school ages ago. Hopefully I'll still be of use and assistance to some learners, at least to those who come from European countries. I'm sure I sometimes just confuse native speakers of English.
That tradition is centuries old in Europe. It is probably based on early grammarians' work and analysis of Latin. For example, "my" and its equivalents in all the grammar books that I have read and that deal with Finnish, Swedish, German, English and Latin grammar is invariably called a pronoun. In America, I think it's a called a possessive adjective? Perhaps in Britain too. Of course it isn't used instead of a noun and thus the name is misleading, but grammarians just call it a possessive pronoun anyway. It is a matter of what has been more or less consciously agreed upon. I have seen the term "dependent possessive pronoun" used to refer to "my", and the term "independent possessive pronoun" has been applied to words like "mine" because they don't need a noun after them. Therefore they are "independent". If I began to use such terms here, I'm sure I would confuse people even more!
Yes, context will tell, and I think it is plain to see in all cases. In Finnish, there are no such problems - if that is a problem at all. A noun cannot be mistaken for a verb. Nouns and verbs are always different words.
Cheers, CB