How can a simple tree algorithm be coded in a functional language?

(defun buildtree (wordlist) ...code to build tree recursively returns the tree...)
(define lookup (tree word) ...code to look up word using tree, returns t or nil...)

(defun lookupmany (tree querylist)
   (if (eq querylist nil)
       nil
       (cons (lookup tree (car querylist)) (lookupmany tree (cdr querylist))
   )
)

(defun main (wordlist querylist) ; the main entry point
   (lookupmany (buildtree wordlist) querylist)
)