Initiality for Typed Syntax and Semantics

Abstract

In this thesis we give an algebraic characterization of the syntax and semantics of simply–typed languages. More precisely, we characterize simply–typed binding syntax equipped with reduction rules via a universal property, namely as the initial object of some category.
We specify a language by a 2–signature (Σ, A), that is, a signature on two levels: the syntactic level Σ specifies the sorts and terms of the language, and associates a sort to each term. The semantic level A specifies, through inequations, reduction rules on the terms of the language. To any given 2–signature (Σ, A) we associate a category of “models” of (Σ, A). We prove that this category has an initial object, which integrates the terms freely generated by Σ and the reduction relation — on those terms — generated
by A. We call this object the programming language generated by (Σ, A).
Initiality provides an iteration principle which allows to specify translations on the syntax, possibly to a language over different sorts. Furthermore, translations specified via the iteration principle are by construction type–safe and faithful with respect to reduction.
To illustrate our results, we consider two examples extensively: firstly, we specify a double negation translation from classical to intuitionistic propositional logic via the category–theoretic iteration principle. Secondly, we specify a translation from PCF to the untyped lambda calculus which is faithful with respect to reduction in the source and
target languages.
In a second part, we formalize some of our initiality theorems in the proof assistant Coq. The implementation yields a machinery which, when given a 2–signature, returns an implementation of its associated abstract syntax together with certified substitution operation, iteration operator and a reduction relation generated by the specified reduction rules.