  The primary intention of Bacon's semiotic analyses is, as it was already with Augustine, to provide the foundations for the semantics of spoken language.[27]  According to Bacon, an adequate and complete account of the “difficult issue” (difficilis dubitatio) of what the significate of a vocal expression is has to consider three different aspects: 1) the signification of vocal expressions apart from impositio, i.e., apart from their being endowed with (conventional) meaning by ‘imposition’, 2) their signification according to imposition, and 3) their signification over and above imposition.