Compositional Characterizations of lambda-Terms Using Intersection Types

Abstract We show how to characterize compositionally a number of evaluation properties of λ-terms using Intersection Type assignment systems. In particular, we focus on termination properties, such as strong normalization, normalization, head normalization, and weak head normalization. We consider also the persistent versions of such notions. By way of example, we consider also another evaluation property, unrelated to termination, namely reducibility to a closed term. Many of these characterization results are new, to our knowledge, or else they streamline, strengthen, or generalize earlier results in the literature. The completeness parts of the characterizations are proved uniformly for all the properties, using a set-theoretical semantics of intersection types over suitable kinds of stable sets. This technique generalizes Krivine’s and Mitchell’s methods for strong normalization to other evaluation properties.

Authors

• Mariangiola Dezani-Ciancaglini
• Furio Honsell
• Yoko Motohama

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