Ripe apples are healthful. Unripe apples are hurtful. In these two sentences we have the same word apples to name the same general class of things; but the prefixed words ripe and unripe, marking opposite qualities in the apples, separate the apples into two kinds—the ripe ones and the unripe ones.
These prefixed words ripe and unripe, then, limit the word apples in its scope; ripe apples or unripe apples applies to fewer things than apples alone applies to.
If we say the, this, that apple, or an, no apple, or some, many, eight apples, we do not mark any quality of the fruit; but the, this, or that points out a particular apple, and limits the word apple to the one pointed out; and an, no, some, many, or eight limits the word in respect to the number of apples that it denotes.
These and all such words as by marking quality, by pointing out, or by specifying number or quantity limit the scope or add to the meaning of the noun, +modify+ it, and are called +Modifiers+.
In the sentence above, apples is the +Simple Subject+ and ripe apples is the +Modified Subject+.
Words that modify nouns and pronouns are called +Adjectives+ (Lat. ad, to, and jacere, to throw).
+DEFINITION.—A Modifier is a word or a group of words joined to some part of the sentence to qualify or limit the meaning+.
The +Subject+ with its +Modifiers+ is called the +Modified Subject+, or Logical Subject.
+DEFINITION.—An Adjective is a word used to modify a noun or a pronoun+.
Analysis and Parsing.