there are certain similarities to other very-low-operator-count languages - the big difference is that with Kernel's fexprs, you can go from this handful of operators to a fully-featured language more expressive than Scheme, and do so with style. See the R-1RK - it builds up the whole language, sequentially, from the built-ins:

ftp://ftp.cs.wpi.edu/pub/techreports/pdf/05-07.pdf