SQL :)
More seriously, R is more of a functional language than one would think, but it's certainly not a great general purpose language.
More seriously, R is more of a functional language than one would think, but it's certainly not a great general purpose language.
In terms of the R discussion, "Evaluating the Design of the R Language" seems to put the functional aspects in relief (http://r.cs.purdue.edu/pub/ecoop12.pdf)
In terms of where things are headed, I just came across Spivak and Wisnesky's work on Functional Query Language (FQL), http://wisnesky.net/fql.html. The introductory slides http://www.categoricaldata.net/doc/introSlides.pdf call to be read seriously.