 There is no clear starting date for modism, and it only gradually disappears in the late Middle Ages, but the height of creativity was reached in the last third of the thirteenth century. The basic idea is simple: the verb “to run” and the noun “a run” signify the same “thing”, but in different ways. This could be generalized to cover cases like the concrete “white” and the abstract “whiteness”, as well as other parts of speech than just nouns and verbs: “a pain” “it hurts” “hurting” “painfully” “ouch!” could all be seen as having a common significate, only signified in different ways. Similarly, the different cases of a noun, or the different tenses or persons of a verb could be described as different ways of signifying (modi significandi) the same, and in general all grammatical categories could be understood to be based on different modi significandi. Add to this (a) a series of rules about how two words may be construed with each other in a sentence depending on which modes of signifying they possess, and (b) the assumption that at bottom all languages share the same grammar with the same repertoire of modes of signifying, and you have a fairly strong linguistic theory.