However, I don’t think the concept is formalised to the degree suggested by your post. It isn’t like generating/manipulating arrays. Rather it is a format that allows better querying of key/value pairs (in order to retrieve values).
FWIW, I don’t think the ‘look-up table’ terminology is particularly fixed. I would have taken it from the release notes at the time.
I’m planning to extend the lookup table syntax slightly in Tinderbox 8. If there’s something you need that’s not there, bernstein@eastgate.com will find me.