[lispm]

Lisp isn't purely functional.

There are a bunch of books which explain how to write Lisp compilers. There are a bunch of different strategies.

> Does it create stack frames and do calls when recursing

That's what a typical Lisp might do. It might also change the stack frame and just jump to a function...

It's also relatively easy to check out, since Common Lisp has a built-in disassembler. One can take an implementation, compile a function and see the generated code. Just call the function DISASSEMBLE with a function object...