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7.1 The basicsOverviewYou don't need to learn a whole lot about lambda expressions, even though much could be said. Therefore, we will just give some examples and a little explanation. Where to get advanced informationIf you want to know more, you are encouraged to read through this series of pages. Introduction by means of an exampleA lambda expression could look like this: [Person: ?x]<-(Agnt)<-[Sing] "A person, x, is singing" Note the occurrence of '?x' in the space of the referent of the "Person" concept. This syntactic construct, '?x', is a placeholder for something else. We can fill this slot with the referent of another concept, as we shall see shortly. Why is it called a 'lambda-expression'?The reason this is called a lambda expression is that traditionally, such placeholders are written using the Greek letter lambda, or . Thus the above graph could be written: [Person: ]<-(Agnt)<-[Sing] "A person, , is singing" We will mostly stick to the other notation, where we use ?x, ?y, ?z, ?a, ?b, etc. instead of , 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Monadic, dyadic, triadic, n-adicA lambda expression can be monadic, as in the example above, where there is only one formal parameter. A lambda expression can also be dyadic or triadic, having two or three formal parameters respectively. In general, a lambda expressions can have n formal parameters and be n-adic. Prev: 7 Lambda expressions Up: 7 Lambda expressions Next: 7.2 Lambda expressions in use |