[Fussy notes: if the original lambda term has free variables in it, so will the combinatory logic translation. Feel free to worry about this, though you should be confident that it makes sense. You should also convince yourself that if the original lambda term contains no free variables---i.e., is a combinator---then the translation will consist only of S, K, and I (plus parentheses). One other detail: this translation algorithm builds expressions that combine lambdas with combinators. For instance, the translation of `\x.\y.y` is `[\x[\y.y]] = [\x.I] = KI`. In that intermediate stage, we have `\x.I`. It's possible to avoid this, but it takes some careful thought. See, e.g., Barendregt 1984, page 156.]
-Here's an example of the translation:
+Here's a simple example of the translation. We already have a combinator for our true boolean (K is true: it returns its first argument and discards its second argument). What about false?
+
+ [\x\y.y] = [\x[\y.y]] = [\xI] = KI
+
+We can test this translation by feeding it two arbitrary arguments:
+
+ KIXY ~~> IY ~~> Y
+
+Yep, it works.
+
+Here's a more elaborat example of the translation. The goal is to establish that combinators can reverse order, so we use the T combinator, where `T = \x\y.yx`:
[\x\y.yx] = [\x[\y.yx]] = [\x.S[\y.y][\y.x]] = [\x.(SI)(Kx)] = S[\x.SI][\x.Kx] = S(K(SI))(S[\x.K][\x.x]) = S(K(SI))(S(KK)I)
Viola: the combinator takes any X and Y as arguments, and returns Y applied to X.
+One very nice property of combinatory logic is that there is no need to worry about alphabetic variance, or
+variable collision---since there are no (bound) variables, there is no possibility of accidental variable capture,
+and so reduction can be performed without any fear of variable collision. We haven't mentioned the intricacies of
+alpha equivalence or safe variable substitution, but they are in fact quite intricate. (The best way to gain
+an appreciation of that intricacy is to write a program that performs lambda reduction.)
+
Back to linguistic applications: one consequence of the equivalence between the lambda calculus and combinatory
logic is that anything that can be done by binding variables can just as well be done with combinators.
This has given rise to a style of semantic analysis called Variable Free Semantics (in addition to