Characterizing the elementary recursive functions by a fragment of Gödel's \(T\) (Q1590659)

A fragment \(T^*\) of Gödel's \(T\) is obtained by restricting occurrences the iterator functional \({\mathcal I}: 0(\rho\rho)\rho\rho\) to terms \({\mathcal I}t^0\). The Howard-Schütte termination proof for \(T\) is modified to yield a Kalmar-elementary bound for terms \(a\in T^*\): the number of reduction steps up to a normal form is bounded by a tower of \((G(a)+ 1)(d(a)+1)\) exponentials, where \(G(a)\) is the maximum type level in \(a\), and \(d(a)\) is the iterator nesting degree. Every Kalmar-elementary function is represented in \(T^*\) via random access machines. Modifications allowing to include into \(T^*\) recursion with parameter substitution, simple nested recursion and unnested multiple recursion (preserving Kalmar-elementary bounds) are outlined.