It takes more to found a world than to sustain it. I began by citing an analogy with painterly depth of field. Will, attentive hearing, yes. But these are only of use where there is something they can act upon. Reading is, at root, auditory.
Syntax is the author's arrangement of auditory elements on the page.
The syntax is the structure, the scaffold, the architectural principle itself, and its signifies no less than do the signifying words. A pair of examples might make my point more obvious. Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon.