After a few publications within the then new framework of generative grammar, he permanently turned away from this model and has become a profound critic with a strong science-theoretical and semiotic background.
Around the same time, Dressler worked on Breton language from a phonological, text linguistic and sociolinguistic perspective ('language death').
Dressler proposed a model of morphological operations between lexical and grammatical functions, thereby establishing a gradual scale between derivational and inflectional processes.
Due to his science-theoretical interests, Dressler introduced a semiotic model (following Charles Sanders Peirce) into linguistic theory.
Dressler finally adopted the model of 'Natural Phonology' as developed by David Stampe and Patricia Donegan, but refined it with his semiotic science-theoretical considerations.
Both in phonology and morphology, he sees the common ground of languages in more general principles of how signs can be used (= semiotics).
He investigated the uses of diminutives and similar phenomena, again creatively combining formal and semantic (or pragmatic) aspects in innovative ways.