  By speculative grammar Peirce understood the analysis of the kinds of signs there are and the ways that they can be combined significantly. For example, under this heading he introduced three trichotomies of signs and argued for the real possibility of only certain kinds of signs. Signs are qualisigns, sinsigns, or legisigns, accordingly as they are mere qualities, individual events and states, or habits (or laws), respectively. Signs are icons, indices (also called “semes”), or symbols (sometimes called “tokens”), accordingly as they derive their significance from resemblance to their objects, a real relation (for example, of causation) with their objects, or are connected only by convention to their objects, respectively. Signs are rhematic signs (also called “sumisigns” and “rhemes”), dicisigns (also called “quasi-propositions”), or arguments (also called “suadisigns”), accordingly as they are predicational/relational in character, propositional in character, or argumentative in character. Because the three trichotomies are independent of each other, together they yield the abstract possibility that there are 27 distinct kinds of signs.  Peirce argued, however, that 17 of these are logically impossible, so that finally only 10 kinds of signs are genuinely possible. In terms of these 10 kinds of signs, Peirce endeavored to construct a theory of all possible natural and conventional signs, whether simple or complex.