The theme of this paper relates to a general topic in the history of Danish semiotics and linguistics, namely the conflict between Viggo Brøndal’s and Louis Hjelmslev’s approach to a semantic description of meaning in languages (Stjernfelt & Jørgensen 1986, 1989; Gregersen 1989, 1991, Larsen 1986, Cigana and Gregersen 2022). This conflict, which had both personal and epistemological roots, is thrown into a stronger relief if Hjelmslev is substituted with his brother-in-arms through many years, Hans Jørgen Uldall. Hjelmslev’s approach in general was based on objective idealism quite like Brøndal’s, but resulting in very different technical approaches. Uldall, in his presentation of glossematics (1957), takes a different stand in his approach, basing it on a kind of materialism (cp. Katlev 1975). This leads to a stronger emphasis on the discovery procedure as the basis of all approaches to meaning, directly in contrast to Brøndal’s approach, where the meaning models existed independently of the manifestations. Brøndal’s approach may be seen as an attempt to organize existing knowledge of languages and logic within a unified systematic frame. Uldall on the other hand, who first made his linguistic career as a field worker (Native American languages and Danish dialects), was from the beginning looking for ways to systematize content that was at odds with exactly such systems. Uldall collaborated extensively with Hjelmslev, but in the end took their brand of structural thinking to consequences that Hjelmslev found it hard to accept, cp. Fischer-Jørgensen 1967.