Abstract

Peter and Mary danced a waltz at midnight. The surface grammatical form of this sentence suggests that there is something which Peter and Mary dance. An adverbialist would claim that what we have is a substance acting in a certain way or mode. In adverbial theories, putative ontological commitment to something like a sense datum is eliminated by eliminating sentences containing such putative reference and replacing them by sentences about a person sensing in a certain way. ;In this work I explore the suggestion that the strategy applied in the case of sensation may be generalized to other ontological realms. Perhaps apparent commitment to these other sorts of objects can be avoided. We may instead speak of ways or modes of property instantiation or of modes of human action. ;Applying some ideas of Michael Tye, I argue that adverbial theories can be applied to objects other than mental events. I initially explore a general adverbial approach to objects. A general adverbial strategy of this sort involves paraphrasing sentences such as: There is a chair here; by sentences such as: The x's are arranged chairwise here; where 'chairwise' is taken to be an adverbial predicate modifier expressing the way that the x's are arranged. ;I then explore two specific approaches to the case of numbers. The first approach involves modes of property instantiation where a sentence such as: There are twelve apostles; is paraphrased as: The apostles number twelvefold ; where 'twelvefold' is taken to be an adverbial predicate modifier expressing the way in which certain individuals jointly instantiate the property of numbering . ;The second approach involves modes of counting. In this approach a sentence such as: Two is even; is paraphrased as something like: Necessarily, for any x, if x control-counts Z two-ly, then x control-counts Z even-ly; where 'two-ly' and 'even-ly' are taken to be adverbial predicate modifiers expressing the way in which certain individuals are counted. Additionally, I compare and contrast my two approaches with other accounts of number