 According to Abelard, modal terms are strictly speaking adverbs expressing how something said of the subject is actualized, e.g., ‘well’ or ‘quickly’ or ‘necessarily’. Adverbs that do not modify an actual inherence, e.g., ‘possibly’, are called secondary modal terms due to their position in a sentence. Abelard also noticed that in De interpretatione 12–13, Aristotle operates with nominal rather than adverbial modes, e.g. ‘it is necessary that’ or ‘it is possible that’. He seems to have assumed that Aristotle did this because the nominal modes lead to many more problems than simple adverbial modes. This is more clearly seen from the fact that sentences including nominal modes, such as ‘Necesse est Socratem currere’, can be understood either adverbially, ‘Socrates runs necessarily’, or, as suggested by the grammar, ‘That Socrates runs is necessary’. He calls these two alternatives de re necessity sentences and de sensu (or de dicto) necessity sentences, respectively. Abelard seems to be the first to employ this terminology. A de re modal sentence expresses the mode through which the predicate belongs to the subject. The mode is, therefore, associated with a thing, whereas the mode in the de dicto case (as he also calls it) is said of what is expressed by a non-modal sentence.