because it asserts action.

* * * * *

LESSON 12.

MODIFIED SUBJECT.

ADJECTIVES.

+Introductory Hints+.--The subject noun and the predicate verb are not
always or often the whole of the structure that we call the sentence,
though they are the underlying timbers that support the rest of the verbal
bridge. Other words may be built upon them.

We learned in Lesson 8 that things resemble one another and differ from one
another. They resemble and they differ in what we call their qualities.
Things are alike whose qualities are the same, as, two oranges having the
same color, taste, and odor. Things are unlike, as an orange and an apple,
whose qualities are different.

It is by their qualities, then, that we know things and group them.

_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