As noted by "me at subsonic dot net" calling pcntl_signal_dispatch() from within a signal handler invoked by a previous pcntl_signal_dispatch() will not trigger handlers for any new pending signals. This seems to be true even if you pcntl_exec() a new PHP processor to execute an entirely different script.
The solution seems to be to explicitly call pcntl_signal_dispatch()inside a ticks_handler() . And use sig_handler(int) as a push function to a queue. Immediately following the call to dispatch in the ticks_handler, pop your queue doing what you would have done in the signal_handler until the queue is empty.
