Template games unify various approaches to game semantics, by exhibiting them as instances of a double-categorical variant of the slice construction. However, in the particular case of simple games, template games do not quite yield the standard (bi)category. We refine the construction using factorisation systems, obtaining as an instance a slight generalisation of simple games and strategies. Another instance is Day's convolution monoidal structure on the category of presheaves over a strict monoidal category, which answers a question raised in the first author's PhD thesis.
We present a linear logical framework implemented within the Hybrid system [Felty and Momigliano 2012]. Hybrid is designed to support the use of higher-order abstract syntax for representing and reasoning about formal systems, implemented in the Coq Proof Assistant. In this work, we extend the system with a linear specification logic, which provides infrastructure for reasoning directly about object languages with linear features. We developed this framework in order to address the challenges of reasoning about the type system of a quantum lambda calculus. In particular, we started by considering the Proto-Quipper language [Ross 2015], which contains the core of Quipper [Green et al. 2013; Selinger and Valiron 2006]. Quipper is a new quantum programming language under active development with a linear type system. We have completed a formal proof of type soundness for Proto-Quipper [Mahmoud and Felty 2018b]. Our current work includes extending this work to other properties of Proto-Quipper as well as reasoning about other quantum programming languages [Mahmoud and Felty 2018a]. It also includes reasoning about other object languages with linear features in areas such as meta-theory of low-level abstract machine code, proof theory of focused linear sequent calculi, and modeling biological processes as transition systems and proving properties about them [Despeyroux et al. 2018].
In their work on second-order equational logic, Fiore and Hur have studied presentations of simply typed languages by generating binding constructions and equations among them. To each pair consisting of a binding signature and a set of equations, they associate a category of `models', and they give a monadicity result which implies that this category has an initial object, which is the language presented by the pair. In the present work, we propose, for the untyped setting, a variant of their approach where monads and modules over them are the central notions. More precisely, we study, for monads over sets, presentations by generating (`higher-order') operations and equations among them. We consider a notion of 2-signature which allows to specify a monad with a family of binding operations subject to a family of equations, as is the case for the paradigmatic example of the lambda calculus, specified by its two standard constructions (application and abstraction) subject to $\beta$- and $\eta$-equalities. Such a 2-signature is hence a pair $(\Sigma,E)$ of a binding signature $\Sigma$ and a family $E$ of equations for $\Sigma$. This notion of 2-signature has been introduced earlier by Ahrens in a slightly different context. We associate, to each 2-signature $(\Sigma,E)$, a category of `models of $(\Sigma,E)$; and we say that a 2-signature is `effective' if this category has an initial object; the monad underlying this (essentially unique) object is the `monad specified by the 2-signature'. Not every 2-signature is effective; we identify a class of 2-signatures, which we call `algebraic', that are effective. Importantly, our 2-signatures together with their models enjoy `modularity': when we glue (algebraic) 2-signatures together, their initial models are glued accordingly. We provide a computer formalization for our main results.
We formalise the undecidability of solvability of Diophantine equations, i.e. polynomial equations over natural numbers, in Coq's constructive type theory. To do so, we give the first full mechanisation of the Davis-Putnam-Robinson-Matiyasevich theorem, stating that every recursively enumerable problem -- in our case by a Minsky machine -- is Diophantine. We obtain an elegant and comprehensible proof by using a synthetic approach to computability and by introducing Conway's FRACTRAN language as intermediate layer. Additionally, we prove the reverse direction and show that every Diophantine relation is recognisable by $\mu$-recursive functions and give a certified compiler from $\mu$-recursive functions to Minsky machines.
In probabilistic coherence spaces, a denotational model of probabilistic functional languages, morphisms are analytic and therefore smooth. We explore two related applications of the corresponding derivatives. First we show how derivatives allow to compute the expectation of execution time in the weak head reduction of probabilistic PCF (pPCF). Next we apply a general notion of "local" differential of morphisms to the proof of a Lipschitz property of these morphisms allowing in turn to relate the observational distance on pPCF terms to a distance the model is naturally equipped with. This suggests that extending probabilistic programming languages with derivatives, in the spirit of the differential lambda-calculus, could be quite meaningful.
We contribute XTT, a cubical reconstruction of Observational Type Theory which extends Martin-Löf's intensional type theory with a dependent equality type that enjoys function extensionality and a judgmental version of the unicity of identity types principle (UIP): any two elements of the same equality type are judgmentally equal. Moreover, we conjecture that the typing relation can be decided in a practical way. In this paper, we establish an algebraic canonicity theorem using a novel cubical extension (independently proposed by Awodey) of the logical families or categorical gluing argument inspired by Coquand and Shulman: every closed element of boolean type is derivably equal to either 'true' or 'false'.
We propose a modal linear logic to reformulate intuitionistic modal logic S4 (IS4) in terms of linear logic, establishing an S4-version of Girard translation from IS4 to it. While the Girard translation from intuitionistic logic to linear logic is well-known, its extension to modal logic is non-trivial since a naive combination of the S4 modality and the exponential modality causes an undesirable interaction between the two modalities. To solve the problem, we introduce an extension of intuitionistic multiplicative exponential linear logic with a modality combining the S4 modality and the exponential modality, and show that it admits a sound translation from IS4. Through the Curry-Howard correspondence we further obtain a Geometry of Interaction Machine semantics of the modal lambda-calculus by Pfenning and Davies for staged computation.
We generalise the termination method of higher-order polynomial interpretations to a setting with impredicative polymorphism. Instead of using weakly monotonic functionals, we interpret terms in a suitable extension of System F-omega. This enables a direct interpretation of rewrite rules which make essential use of impredicative polymorphism. In addition, our generalisation eases the applicability of the method in the non-polymorphic setting by allowing for the encoding of inductive data types. As an illustration of the potential of our method, we prove termination of a substantial fragment of full intuitionistic second-order propositional logic with permutative conversions.
We present the Delta-calculus, an explicitly typed lambda-calculus with strong pairs, projections and explicit type coercions. The calculus can be parametrized with different intersection type theories T, e.g. the Coppo-Dezani, the Coppo-Dezani-Salle', the Coppo-Dezani-Venneri and the Barendregt-Coppo-Dezani ones, producing a family of Delta-calculi with related intersection type systems. We prove the main properties like Church-Rosser, unicity of type, subject reduction, strong normalization, decidability of type checking and type reconstruction. We state the relationship between the intersection type assignment systems a` la Curry and the corresponding intersection type systems a` la Church by means of an essence function translating an explicitly typed Delta-term into a pure lambda-term one. We finally translate a Delta-term with type coercions into an equivalent one without them; the translation is proved to be coherent because its essence is the identity. The generic Delta-calculus can be parametrized to take into account other intersection type theories as the ones in the Barendregt et al. book.
Dependency pairs are a key concept at the core of modern automated termination provers for first-order term rewriting systems. In this paper, we introduce an extension of this technique for a large class of dependently-typed higher-order rewriting systems. This extends previous resultsby Wahlstedt on the one hand and the first author on the other hand to strong normalization and non-orthogonal rewriting systems. This new criterion is implemented in the type-checker Dedukti.
Cubical type theory provides a constructive justification of homotopy type theory. A crucial ingredient of cubical type theory is a path lifting operation which is explained computationally by induction on the type involving several non-canonical choices. We present in this article two canonicity results, both proved by a sconing argument: a homotopy canonicity result, every natural number is path equal to a numeral, even if we take away the equations defining the lifting operation on the type structure, and a canonicity result, which uses these equations in a crucial way. Both proofs are done internally in a presheaf model.
FSCD 2019: 4th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction, June 24-30, 2019, Dortmund, Germany
Probabilistic programming refers to the idea of using standard programming constructs for specifying probabilistic models from machine learning and statistics, and employing generic inference algorithms for answering various queries on these models, such as posterior inference and estimation of model evidence. Although this idea itself is not new and was, in fact, explored by several programming-language and statistics researchers in the early 2000, it is only in the last few years that probabilistic programming has gained a large amount of attention among researchers in machine learning and programming languages, and that expressive and efficient probabilistic programming systems (such as Anglican, Church, Figaro, Infer.net, PSI, PyMC, Stan, and Venture) started to appear and have been taken up by a nontrivial number of users. The primary goal of my talk is to introduce probabilistic programming to the CONCUR/QUEST/FORMATS audience. At the end of my talk, I want the audience to understand basic results and techniques in probabilistic programming and to feel that these results and techniques are relevant or at least related to what she or he studies, although they typically come from foreign research areas, such as machine learning and statistics. My talk will contain both technical materials and lessons that I learnt from my machine-learning colleagues in Oxford, who are developing a highly-expressive higher-order probabilistic programming language, called Anglican. It will also include my work on the denotational semantics of higher-order probabilistic programming languages and their inference algorithms, which are jointly pursued with colleagues in Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and Tubingen.
Maximal completion (Klein and Hirokawa 2011) is an elegantly simple yet powerful variant of Knuth-Bendix completion. This paper extends the approach to ordered completion and theorem proving as well as normalized completion. An implementation of the different procedures is described, and its practicality is demonstrated by various examples.
We translate the usual class of partial/primitive recursive functions to a pointer recursion framework, accessing actual input values via a pointer reading unit-cost function. These pointer recursive functions classes are proven equivalent to the usual partial/primitive recursive functions. Complexity-wise, this framework captures in a streamlined way most of the relevant sub-polynomial classes. Pointer recursion with the safe/normal tiering discipline of Bellantoni and Cook corresponds to polylogtime computation. We introduce a new, non-size increasing tiering discipline, called tropical tiering. Tropical tiering and pointer recursion, used with some of the most common recursion schemes, capture the classes logspace, logspace/polylogtime, ptime, and NC. Finally, in a fashion reminiscent of the safe recursive functions, tropical tier-ing is expressed directly in the syntax of the function algebras, yielding the tropical recursive function algebras.
We study the computational interpretation of the two standard modal embeddings, usually named after Girard and Godel, of intuitionistic logic into IS4. As source system we take either the call-by-name (cbn) or the call-by-value (cbv) lambda-calculus with simple types. The target system can be taken to be the, arguably, simplest fragment of IS4, here recast as a very simple lambda-calculus equipped with an indeterminate lax monoidal comonad. A slight refinement of the target and of the embeddings shows that: the target is a calculus indifferent to the calling paradigms cbn/cbv, obeying a new paradigm that we baptize call-by-box (cbb), and enjoying standardization; and that Girard's (resp. Godel's) embbedding is a translation of cbn (resp. cbv) lambda-calculus into this calculus, using a compilation technique we call protecting-by-a-box, enjoying the preservation and reflection properties known for cps translations - but in a stronger form that allows the extraction of standardization for cbn or cbv as consequence of standardization for cbb. The modal target and embeddings achieve thus an unification of call-by-name and call-by-value as call-by-box.
