If we regard such expressions as tokens rather than types, then it makes sense to consider the task of concretely ‘counting up to’ a number by  constructing its unary representation in the sense described by Yessenin-Volpin.  For recall that it is a characteristic feature of numerals that they may be generated from certain initial symbols by the application of a finite set of syntactic formation rules – e.g. the unary numerals are generated by applying the formation rule \(\sigma \mapsto \sigma'\) to the initial symbol \(0\). But once this is acknowledged, it also seems difficult to resist the following additional thesis: