We give a direct type-theoretic characterization of the basic mechanisms of object-oriented programming, including objects, methods, message passing, and subtyping, by introducing an explicit constructor for object types and suitable introduction, elimination, and equality rules. The resulting abstract framework provides a basis for justifying and comparing previous encodings of objects based on recursive record types (Cardelli, 1984; Cardelli, 1992; Bruce, 1994; Cook et al., 1990; Mitchell, 1990a) and encodings based on existential types (Pierce & Turner, 1994).

this paper (Compagnoni, Intersection Types and Bounded Polymorphism 3 1994; Compagnoni, 1995) has been used in a type-theoretic model of object-oriented multiple inheritance (Compagnoni & Pierce, 1996). Related calculi combining restricted forms of intersection types with higher-order polymorphism and dependent types have been studied by Pfenning (Pfenning, 1993). Following a more detailed discussion of the pure systems of intersections and bounded quantification (Section 2), we describe, in Section 3, a typed -calculus called F ("Fmeet ") integrating the features of both. Section 4 gives some examples illustrating this system's expressive power. Section 5 presents the main results of the paper: a prooftheoretic analysis of F 's subtyping and typechecking relations leading to algorithms for checking subtyping and for synthesizing minimal types for terms. Section 6 discusses semantic aspects of the calculus, obtaining a simple soundness proof for the typing rules by interpreting types as partial equivalence relations; however, another proof-theoretic result, the nonexistence of least upper bounds for arbitrary pairs of types, implies that typed models may be more difficult to construct. Section 7 offers concluding remarks. 2. Background