I pretty much agree with the essence of what you're saying. However, it could still be syntax. For instance linq query expressions are a defined to translate into various .Select(), .Where(), .SelectMany(), and other method calls. However, those methods aren't necessarily defined in the standard library. I mean, they usually are, but they could be just as easily defined for a given type in a 3rd party library. So this isn't an entirely new concept in .net.