That's is an interesting point, and one well worth making to the assembled hordes.
The regulations on timber useage are FAR more to do with 'allowable strain' - i.e. deflection - under load - than 'permanent deformation' (elastic limit: The point at which a bit of wood never 'springs back') or teh ultimate failure (the things snaps or crushes compeltely, and the house falls down.
With blockwork they three points are pretty much all the same. If E.g. a
3 meter concrete beam deflects more than about 1/2" its likle to buckle and break. Or a brick pillar. If it crushes at all, its probably going to collapse entirely.But a 3 meter wooden beam center loaded will probably (depending on its cross section) be able to sag a good couple of feet before it snaps.
But in the context of vertical wooden posts, well constrained as not to buckle, I think they are far more like 'blockwork' in that they will not compress very much at all before they simple collapse.
Blockwork - apart from reinforced concrete, has bugger all tensile strength, which is why you need to carry blockwork all the way to the ground to support a load. It cannot span spaces unless you use arches. Or renifoced concrete lintels etc.
Timber on the other hand is excellent in tension - as good as in compression, but its not very stiff, so you end up with braced structures to limit the bending. That is either diagonal trussing or stressed skin - like plywood.
I am not sure how a 'sructural wall' is defined in tems of limits in either ultimate strength or stiffness. My impression from teh way teh archtect, strctural engineers and the BCO proceeded in my house is that by and large its pretty much aquestion of 'well that wall is load bearing: the floor above will span it, so plate it with ply to stiffen it' and that is about IT. The main timbers here were specified as much for insulation depth as for ultimate strength. Or flexibility.
There is no doubt that if you take a stud wall of verticals and a lintel across the top, and load it, the uprights will bow at some point, and that is very dangerous, because once they do the wall is almost at the point of collapse. I think thats what the plating is for. That copes with bowing in the plane of the wall. OIn teh other direction you just have to rely on the size of teh timber - the wall thickness - to keep it stiff. Use of squarte section timber would probably obviate the need for plating as well as a lot of noggins.
Of course in a total timber frame the plating is totally mandatory to avod parallogram collpase IYSWIM. Or use of traditional diagonal bracing as seen on oak framed barns etc.