Dear Glenn,
I just happened to come across a statement of the principle of signal meaning being encoded by site and time of arrival. It comes at the top of page 74 of Randy Gallistel's 'Memory and the Computational Brain'. Randy is both a biologist and an authority on computational linguistics. Many might say he is the leading authority on signal coding in the brain when it comes to computational theory. He says:

' This principle has long been recognised in neuroscience. ... now called place coding. Place coding means that it is the locus of activity that determines the referent of neural activity, not the form of that activity. Activity in the visual cortex is experienced as light no matter how that activity is produced.. usually  produced by light falling on the retina ... but can be produced by pushing on the eyeball. ...'

I admit that he couches this place coding in terms of 'activity' without reference to arrival but hopefully I have convinced you in previous posts that for the signals to be like something to something the relevant 'place' must be arrival at whatever experiences them. The fact that Gallistel does not himself take this on board may be why after nearly 300 pages he finds no way to explain what he wants to explain.