Somehow, we must begin by correlating sentences with world affairs, correspondence of words with things coming after. The articulation of the sentence into elements that are supposed to correspond must result from this analysis rather than being the basis of it—and so with the articulation of the world affair that the sentence maps.
How Intentional Icons Map onto the World
What I will describe is the correspondence relation between an indicative intentional icon and its real value. Description of the correspondence relation for imperative intentional icons is exactly parallel.
When an indicative intentional icon has a real value, it is related to that real value as follows: (1) The real value is a Normal condition for performance of the icon's direct proper functions. (2) There are operations upon or transformations (in the mathematical sense) of the icon that correspond one-to-one to operations upon or transformations of the real value such that (3) any transform of the icon resulting from one of these operations has as a Normal condition for proper performance the corresponding transform of the real value.
The governing idea here is that, in the first instance at least, it is transformations of the icon that correspond to transformations of the real value—operations upon the icon that correspond to operations upon the real value—not elements of the icon that correspond to elements of the real value.
Whatever is considered as subject to a set of transformations is as such "articulate" in a certain way. It is not articulated into parts but into invariant and variant aspects. What remains unchanged under all transformations in a transformation set is the invariant aspect of a thing relative to that set; what changes under these transformations are variant aspects. If it is transformations of an intentional icon that correspond to transformations of its real value, thus yielding correspondence between icons and world affairs, an intentional icon is always "articulate" in the above sense, and so is the affair to which it corresponds. But neither the articulation of the icon nor of the affair is an articulation into parts. Neither the icon nor the iconed is originally articulated as a configuration or concatenation of objects or of elements and relations.
In the case of bee dances, transformations of the dance (say, increase the number of loops by one, rotate the angle of the axis of the figure eight 20º clockwise) correspond to transformations of the sun-hive-nectar relation that is mapped. I do not know what is invariant in the bee dance. But invariant in the real value is the relata of the relation mapped—sun, hive, nectar. For example, there is no transformation of the bee dance that corresponds to replacing the sun with the moon such that the resulting dance maps the relation of moon, hive, and nectar.