Question: I'm looking mainly at things like new SQL syntax, new kinds of locking, new capabilities etc. Not so much in the surrounding services like data warehousing and reports...

Answer: 
There's a great article on the new T-SQL features [here](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721270.aspx) (by SQL guru Itzik Ben-Gan). It covers

* Declaring and initializing variables
* Compound assignment operators
* Table value constructor support through the VALUES clause
* Enhancements to the CONVERT function
* New date and time data types and functions
* Large UDTs (GEOMETRY and GEOGRAPHY)
* The HIERARCHYID data type
* Table types and table-valued parameters
* The MERGE statement, grouping sets enhancements
* DDL trigger enhancements
* Sparse columns
* Filtered indexes
* Large CLR user-defined aggregates
* Multi-input CLR user-defined aggregates
* The ORDER option for CLR table-valued functions
* Object dependencies
* Change data capture
* Collation alignment with Microsoft® Windows®
* Deprecation
HotAdd CPU. <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb964703.aspx>