An Abstract Monadic Semantics for Value Recursion

This paper proposes an operational semantics for value recursion in the context of monadic metalanguages. Our technique for combining value recursion with computational effects works uniformly for all monads. The operational nature of our approach is related to the implementation of recursion in Scheme and its monadic version proposed by Friedman and Sabry, but it defines a different semantics and does not rely on assignments. When contrasted to the axiomatic approach proposed by Erkok and Launchbury, our semantics for the continuation monad invalidates one of the axioms, adding to the evidence that this axiom is problematic in the presence of continuations.