Are 修飾語 in Japanese different from 'modifier' in English?


I'm a native English speaker and taking Kumon's Japanese for 小学校1年生 class
(which is an adventure lol), and it's trying to teach me about 修飾語 right now.
I looked up 修飾語 and everything I can find is telling me that 修飾語 is a
"modifier" in English. Ok, that makes sense.

But one of the example sentences in my homework is 女の子がボールをなげる。And it
identifies ボールを as the 修飾語, modifying なげる。But I'm pretty sure that in English,
in "the girl throws the ball", "ball" would be the direct object. Direct
objects can't be modifiers, can they?

I've managed to thoroughly confuse myself. Am I misunderstanding how modifiers
work? Are 修飾語 slightly different from modifiers in English? What is happening?




Your logic doesn't work when you compare "ball" with ボールを instead of ボール
itself. Is "at him" as in "the girl throws the ball at him" a modifier? If so,
ボールを is no different.

Now, "him" and ボール are an indirect object and a direct object respectively.
However, "at him" and ボールを work adverbially to specify information about the
verb, i.e. you throw not other things or to other directions but a ball at
him, as well as 白い花 indicates not other flowers but white one, in other words,
a modifier for the verb.

