General sign theory (GST) deals with how distinct sign systems are grounded, developed with increasing abstractness over time, and differentiated in efficacies in experience and discourse. GST has 3 components: The theory of true narrative representations (TNR theory) shows that TNRs are unique in being relatively well determined with respect to the real world, well connected to that world and to each other, and generalizable. TNRs provide the essential grounding for the child's first meaningful words. GST also includes a theory of abstraction about how signs of all kinds are vested with content and a theory of systems grammar that incorporates actual bodily referents. GST is compatible with aspects of amodal, indexical, and perceptual symbol theories but predicts certain findings they cannot account for. For example, it differentiates percepts of objects (in their space-time settings) from icons abstracted from those percepts (as in remembering or anticipating the movement of an object) and from fully generalizable concepts (e.g., the unfilled out thought or concept of an as yet unidentified object).