  The extent to which this attribution is accurate is unclear. The view is at least superficially inconsistent with William's realism and anti-vocalism in all other areas. Additionally, Abelard was among the first to recognize the importance of the de dicto / de re distinction; the issue may be fairly confused in William's work, as it was in many others. On the other hand, several anonymous texts attribute to William the claim that ‘possibly’ and other modal terms modify the signification of other words in a sentence. Thus, ‘bishop’ signifies actual and existing bishops, but ‘possible bishop’ has a figurative sense signifying all those things whose nature is not repugnant with being a bishop (Iwakuma 1999: 112). This is not necessarily a rejection of de re modality, but again, more of William's work needs to be studied.