by Ulpianus » Wed Mar 10, 2004 8:42 pm
No. But in a sense it's a trick question. Those particular endings will normally apply to nouns or adjectives. But the word in question might be a participle (a verbal adjective), or it might be a gerund (a verbal noun: though these are pretty easy to recognise). And, to make matters worse, it may be a participle functioning as a noun. But a participle, although an adjective derived from a verbal stem, is still an adjective. We learn it as part of learning "verbs" for the purposes of accidence, and we look for their meanings in dictionaries using the verb's principle parts, but a participle as such is not a verb; it's an adjective.
In the end, you are going to have to look these things up if you don't recognise them. But then, if you want to understand the sentence, you are sooner or later going to have to know what they mean anyway! You may be able to guess from context, or from the syntax, and by a process of eliminating what you do know, what sort of animal you have. That's why learning vocabulary is at least as important as learning grammar. You need both, and they both help you with each other.