[mathh]

>>A language with good orthogonality is smaller, more consistent, and is easier to learn due to there being few exceptions from the overall set of rules (wikipedia btw)

table = (SELECT column | scalar expression FROM graph | table WHERE ..GROUP BY ... HAVING... ORDER BY...)

So in SQL, each scope is a table and that is the main primitive.

More metrics would be needed to criticize SQL orthogonality, instead of providing only one example of subqueries as scalar expressions, when they more generally produce tables.

Actually, SQL use the same query syntax for scalars and for tables and that could be seen as good orthogonality.