Abstract not found

We propose and study coercive subtyping, a formal extension with subtyping of dependent type theories such as Martin-Lof's type theory [NPS90] and the type theory UTT [Luo94]. In this approach, subtyping with specified implicit coercions is treated as a feature at the level of the logical framework; in particular, subsumption and coercion are combined in such a way that the meaning of an object being in a supertype is given by coercive definition rules for the definitional equality. It is shown that this provides a conceptually simple and uniform framework to understand subtyping and coercion relations in type theories with sophisticated type structures such as inductive types and universes. The use of coercive subtyping in formal development and in reasoning about subsets of objects is discussed in the context of computerassisted formal reasoning. 1 Introduction A type in type theory is often intuitively thought of as a set. For example, types in Martin-Lof's type theory [ML84, NPS90...

Coercive subtyping is a general approach to subtyping, inheritance and abbreviation in dependent type theories. A vital requirement for coercive subtyping is that of coherence which essentially says that coercions between any two types must be unique. Another important task for coercive subtyping is to prove the admissibility or elimination of transitivity and substitution. In this paper, we propose and study the notion of Weak Transitivity, consider suitable subtyping rules for certain parameterised inductive types and prove its coherence and the admissibility of substitution and weak transitivity in the coercive subtyping framework.

The extension of Martin-Löf's theory of types with record types and subtyping has elsewhere been presented. We give a concise description of that theory and motivate its use for the formalization of systems of algebras. We also give a short account of a proof checker that has been implemented on machine. The logical heart of the checker is constituted by the procedures for the mechanical verification of the forms of judgement of a particular formulation of the extension. The case study that we put forward in this work has been developed and mechanically verified using the implemented system. We illustrate all the features of the extended theory that we consider relevant for the task of formalizing algebraic constructions.

Coherence is a vital requirement for the correct use of coercive subtyping for abbreviation and other applications. However, some coercions are incoherent, although very useful. A typical example of such is the subtyping rules for -types: the component-wise rules and the rule of the rst projection. Both of these groups of rules are often used in practice (and coherent themselves), but they are incoherent when put together directly. In this paper, we study this case for -types by introducing a new subtyping relation and the resulting system enjoys the properties of coherence and admissibility of substitution and transitivity.