Hi Steve (swell name, by the way), From this last comment, it appears that you have a lot to learn. Paul's was a pretty good explanation of a first step at understanding what might be going on in the circuit shown some time ago (an inductor in shunt with the base-emitter of the transistor).
The Base-Emitter in a transistor is a semiconductor junction just like a diode and in the (higher power) RF amplifiers behaves pretty much like a diode. With RF applied to the base, there will be conduction on the positive peaks only and this will constitute a DC current flow which must have a DC path. The inductor provides such a path since the capacitor can not. If this makes no sense to you then you, indeed are in over your head in an attempt to understand because it is pretty basic and simple. You will need to understand diodes and transistors first.
you say you are "really struggling here with with some of the terminology." Perhaps you can tell us which words are giving you heartburn?
I will respond to Paul's content, however, with this. The BE capacitance of this device, in this aparent application, I am pretty sure is not the dominant effect. The Rrverse biased capacitance is the wrong thing to focus on. While it is interesting that that it and the inductor are near resonance, this probaly is not what is happening because this would make the inpedance looking into the base very high and difficult to get power to the base, contrary to Reg's hunch. The orignal ASCII cricuit simply had a coupling cap and a base-emitter shunt cap. It looks like class B or C. C more likely. Therefore the transistor is in conduction part of the time and not for another part of the time. Therefore we have a nonlinear, large signal condition. The base impedance under this condition (pulsed conduction) will be quite low and dominate and therefore, it will need some impedance matching to get enough into the base (from the preceeding collector). SO, I say that the inductor is :
1- Providing the obvious DC path and. 2- Impedance matching along with the "coupling" capacitor (did it have a value??)...BUT!The one monkey wrench I will throw in, is that the Miller effect will also have a very significant effect on the input impedance of the stage. The Ccb is a path providing significant feedback and probably dominating the input impedance.
If you don't recall, the Miller Effect describes the capacitance looking into the base which looks like Ccb times the voltage gain (call it A). This is due to the fact that Ccb connects between the input / base and output / collector. Because the collector voltage is ~~ 180 degrees out of phase, with the base voltage, an input voltage change of, say one millivolt, on the input side of Ccb results in a change in voltage on the output side of Ccb of one milivolt times the voltage gain, A. This results in a total change across Ccb of A+1 milivolts and therefore a current change A+1 times a value that the 1 milivolt input change expected to see. This makes the capacitor look A+1 times as big as it actually is.
Finally, and possibly the most difficult to quantify (ok two monkey wrenches--nobody expects the Spanish inquisition), in RF circuits there is
*very frequently* one other confounding factor and this is the circuit board layout and/or the actual physical construction. All the previous talk about how inductors and capacitors behave differently at high frequencies (I believe by Roy Lewallen) is nicely put, but the actual connection methods also can have a very significant effect on what value components are used. The "wiring" can add other capacitances and inductances which, very often, do not show up on the schematic. This can have profound effect on the components used, completely masking any hope of understanding of the circuit from the schematic diagram. As the power level in the circuit goes up, the impedances go down and short wires or PC board runs can become significant impedances, either to help or hurt the desired matching circuit.