All corejoomla components uses Joomla shareable layout system so that they can be used anywhere with less configuration.
Please read more about shareable layouts here:
https://docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Sharing_layouts_across_views_or_extensions_with_JLayout
To override any component layout:
- Identify the layout file you would like to override
- Copy the layout files to your override directory
- Make modifications and you are good to go.
Joomla will search the overrides in specific folders in the order below. Whichever finds it first, it will use it.
[0] => /templates/yourtemplatename/html/layouts/com_componentname [1] => /components/com_componentname/layouts [2] => /templates/yourtemplatename/html/layouts [3] => /layouts
So, for example, if you would like to override the layout file components/com_communityanswers/layouts/default/toolbar.php; copy the toolbar.php file to /templates/yourtemplatename/html/layouts/com_communityanswers/default/toolbar.php and do your modifications.