But what would confer an adaptive advantage on a syntactic faculty that just generated meaningless and imperceptible syntactic structures?
Culture, which is supposed to be the focus of archaeological investigations is imperceptible in principle.
The visible action is, in effect, like a series of still photographs with transitions between them (although the 'stills' may be almost imperceptible).
By small, imperceptible increments, new technologies have given us expanded possibilities in life while creating new unforeseen problems rarely considered while adopting new technology.
You could, of course, reply that this being an exceptional situation (as it is in this example), the toll on overpopulation would be imperceptible.
My account of the evening cannot, however, do justice to the tactical facades - the bluffs, grand postures, and imperceptible dodges - so common to tournament settings.
Yet the transformations are not metamorphic but evolutionary: changes apparently imperceptible are occurring nevertheless, and consequently the final result may be more far-reaching, because unsuspected.
Even from the victim's point of view, the overall perceptible increase in pain might be traced to the imperceptible effects of the individual acts.
