Introduction. The first paragraph of Roger Bacon's De signis revisited

Roger Bacon's De signis opens with the assertion that the sign belongs to the category of relation: " signum est in praedicamento relationis " (§1). The sign is in a double relation, to the interpreter(R1), and to the thing it signifies(R2). The full scope of this paragraph can only be determined by taking into account at least two other passages in the treatise (§§122 and 146), which are part of the treatment of connotation and the question of whether a word can lose its meaning. What unifies these three paragraphs is the presence of the father-son example, described as a mode of the 'per se' relationship. The next step is to explain (1) the hierarchy of the two relations and the type to which they belong, and (2) to distinguish the R2 relation of the sign to the signified, which is 'per se' or essential, from the relation of a sign to an existing thing, which is 'per accidens', thus explaining the analogy signum/significatum = scibile/scientia. This is the starting point for understanding the most original lines of Baconian semiotics.