Abstract: Semiotics is the study of meanings, which are relations between consciousness and the world of objects. Hence a series of puzzles: objects call for signs to stand for them, or signs create meanings? This question is of paramount importance as it decides the focus of semiotic studies. The paper proposes that signs must precede interpretive meanings which are not in existence when signs appear. The world of meaning is fundamentally something of becoming. If signs exist in the present, interpretive meanings belong to the future, or we may say that the past is for the experiential fore-understanding, the present is the moment for signs, whereas the interpretive meaning belong to the future, thus forming the existential scheme of time.