Here's my C# solution that uses no global state, and features a cool (I think) variadic lambda.

    using System;
    using System.Linq;

    class Program {
        static void Main() {
            Console.WriteLine(g("al"));
            Console.WriteLine(g()("al"));
            Console.WriteLine(g()()("al"));
            Console.WriteLine(g()()()("al"));
            Console.WriteLine("Press any key to continue.");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        delegate dynamic Goal(params string[] args);

        static dynamic g(string suffix = null, string prefix = "g") {
            if (suffix == "al") return prefix + suffix;
            return (Goal)(a => g(a.FirstOrDefault(), prefix + "o"));
        }
    }

It was a fun exercise. I found that creating a github pull request was not such a fun exercise, and took about 10x longer than the actual task at hand. Perhaps I could learn to do it more smoothly with practice.