The second kind of modality de re concerns the properties of things.  Like the existence of things, the possession of properties by things is subject to modal qualification. If Sally, who speaks English, says, “I might have spoken only French”, almost everyone will take that statement to be no less obviously true than her statement that she might not have existed. And if what she has said is indeed true, then “speaking English” is a property that she has only contingently or (the more usual word) only accidentally.  Additionally there may be properties which some objects have essentially. A thing has a property essentially if it could not exist without having that property. Examples of essential properties tend to be controversial, largely because the most plausible examples of a certain object's possessing a property essentially are only as plausible as the thesis that that object possesses those properties at all. For example, if Sally is a physical object, as physicalists suppose, then it is very plausible for them to suppose further that she is essentially a physical object—but it is controversial whether they are right to suppose that she is a physical object. And, of course, the same thing can be said, mutatis mutandis, concerning dualists and the property of being a non-physical object. It would seem, however, that Sally is either essentially a physical object or essentially a non-physical object. And many find it plausible to suppose that (whether she is physical or non-physical) she has the property “not being a poached egg” essentially.