Towards a self-selective and self-healing evaluation

Assume a recursive routine for evaluating expressions against an assignment function that stores accumulated binding information for variable names. This paper proposes adding an If operation that allows for what is evaluated to be automatically selected during the runtime of evaluation based on the state of the assignment function. This can (a) allow a single encoding of content that would otherwise require distinct expressions, and (b) equip an expression with a way to recover from situations that would cause unwelcome results from evaluation. The new operation is demonstrated to be an essential component for allowing a robust interpretation of unknown lexical items and for feeding an automated regulation of binding dependencies determined on a grammatical basis.