Typical argument for the "From table select column" are due to better matching evaluation logic and improving type-ahead suggestions in IDE's, but I haven't yet heard the argument that it also makes parsing simpler.
Writing the parser as a process has made me (even) more familiar with SQL syntax and semantics and understand it better, which has only increased my disgust[1] of the whole matted thorny snarl that it is. I was asking for a dose of rationality for Lil, not a syntactic infection inherited from a misdesigned language. HTH.
(BTW the designers of SQL knew well that it had other problems and admitted them, eg. search for "A Critique of ANSI SQL Isolation Levels").
[1] yeah, that's the right word.