In various examples, lanes may be grouped and a sign may be assigned to a lane in a group, then propagated to another lane in the group to associate semantic meaning corresponding to the sign with the lanes. The sign may be assigned to the most similar lane as quantified by a matching score subject to the lane meeting any hard constraints. Propagation of an assignment of the sign to a different lane may be based on lane attributes and/or sign attributes. Lane attributes may be evaluated and assignments of signs may occur for a lane as a whole, and/or for particular segments of a lane (e.g., of multiple segments perceived by the system). A sign may be a compound sign that is identified as individual signs, which are associated with one another. Attributes of the compound sign may provide semantic meaning used to operate a machine.