The Stoics and the Giraffe

The stoics were materialists and think that nothing really exists apart from bodies. When i say this giraffe is a majestic beast, the only relevant body here seems to be the giraffe. But clearly, my sentence doesn't say or mean the giraffe itself. I can touch a giraffe, but i cannot say it. Rather, the stoics suggests there is something called alecton the saable, which i have latched on to with my utterance. The saables form a kind of bridge between language and the world, between the noises coming out of my mouth and the giraffe herself. So what sorts of causes do they accept? What is their understanding of the