The significance of type theory to the theory of programming languages has long been recognized. Advances in programming languages have often derived from understanding that stems from type theory. However, these applications of type theory to practical programming languages have been indirect; the differences between practical languages and type theory have prevented direct connections between the two. This dissertation presents systematic techniques directly relating practical programming languages to type theory. These techniques allow programming languages to be interpreted in the rich mathematical domain of type theory. Such interpretations lead to semantics that are at once denotational and operational, combining the advantages of each, and they also lay the foundation for formal verification of computer programs in type theory. Previous type theories either have not provided adequate expressiveness to interpret practical languages, or have provided such expressiveness at the expense of essential features of the type theory. In particular, no previous type theory has supported a notion of partial functions (needed to interpret recursion in practical languages), and a notion of total functions and objects (needed to reason about data values), and an intrinsic notion of equality (needed for most interesting results). This dissertation presents the first type theory incorporating all three, and discusses issues arising in the design of that type theory. This type theory is used as the target of a type­theoretic semantics for a expressive programming calculus. This calculus may serve as an internal language for a variety of functional programming languages. The semantics is stated as a syntax­directed embedding of the programming calculus into type theory. A critical point arising in both the type theory and the type­theoretic semantics is the issue of admissibility. Admissibility governs what types it is legal to form recursive functions over. To build a useful type theory for partial functions it is necessary to have a wide class of admissible types. In particular, it is necessary for all the types arising in the type­theoretic semantics to be admissible. In this dissertation I present a class of admissible types that is considerably wider than any previously known class.

We show how to implement a calculus with higher-order subtyping and subkinding by replacing uses of implicit subsumption with explicit coercions. To ensure this can be done, a polymorphic function is adjusted to take, as an additional argument, a proof that its type constructor argument has the desired kind. Such a proof is extracted from the derivation of a kinding judgement and may in turn require proof coercions, which are extracted from subkinding judgements. This technique is formalized as a type-directed translation from a calculus of higher-order subtyping to a subtyping-free calculus. This translation generalizes an existing result for second-order subtyping calculi (such as F ). We also discuss two interpretations of subtyping, one that views it as type inclusion and another that views it as the existence of a well-behaved coercion, and we show, by a type-theoretic construction, that our translation is the minimum consequence of shifting from the inclusion interpretation to th...

Partial equivalence relations (and categories of these) are a standard tool in semantics of type theories and programming languages, since they often provide a cartesian closed category with extended definability. Using the theory of exact categories, we give a category-theoretic explanation of why the construction of a category of partial equivalence relations often produces a cartesian closed category. We show how several familiar examples of categories of partial equivalence relations fit into the general framework. 1 Introduction Partial equivalence relations (and categories of these) are a standard tool in semantics of programming languages, see e.g. [2, 5, 7, 9, 15, 17, 20, 22, 35] and [6, 29] for extensive surveys. They are usefully applied to give proofs of correctness and adequacy since they often provide a cartesian closed category with additional properties. Take for instance a partial equivalence relation on the set of natural numbers: a binary relation R ` N\ThetaN on th...

Partial types allow the reasoning about partial functions in type theory. The partial functions of main interest are recursively computed functions, which are commonly assigned types using fixpoint induction. However, fixpoint induction is valid only on admissible types. Previous work has shown many types to be admissible, but has not shown any dependent products to be admissible. Disallowing recursion on dependent product types substantially reduces the expressiveness of the logic; for example, it prevents much reasoning about modules, objects and algebras. In this paper I present two new tools, predicate-admissibility and monotonicity, for showing types to be admissible. These tools show a wide class of types to be admissible; in particular, they show many dependent products to be admissible. This alleviates difficulties in applying partial types to theorem proving in practice. I also present a general least upper bound theorem for fixed points with regard to a computational approxim...

In this paper a hybrid type theory HTT is defined which combines the programming language notion of partial type with the logical notion of total type into a single theory. A new partial type constructor A is added to the type theory: objects in A may diverge, but if they converge, they must be members of A. A fixed point typing rule is given to allow for typing of fixed points. The underlying theory is based on ideas from Feferman's Class Theory and Martin Lof's Intuitionistic Type Theory. The extraction paradigm of constructive type theory is extended to allow direct extraction of arbitrary fixed points. Important features of general programming logics such as LCF are preserved, including the typing of all partial functions, a partial ordering ! ¸ on computations, and a fixed point induction principle. The resulting theory is thus intended as a general-purpose programming logic. Rules are presented and soundness of the theory established. Keywords: Constructive Type Theory, Logics...

There are compelling benefits to using foundational type theory as a framework for programming language semantics. I give a semantics of an expressive programming calculus in the foundational type theory of Nuprl. Previous typetheoretic semantics have used less expressive type theories, or have sacrificed important programming constructs such as recursion and modules. The primary mechanisms of this semantics are partial types, for typing recursion, set types, for encoding power and singleton kinds, which are used for subtyping and module programming, and very dependent function types, for encoding signatures. Keywords Semantics, program verification, type theory, functional programming 1 INTRODUCTION Type theory has become a popular framework for formal reasoning in computer science and has formed the basis for a number of automated deduction systems, including Automath, Nuprl, HOL and Coq, among others. In addition to formalizing mathematics, these systems are widely used for the a...