We present a categorical theory of `well-behaved' operational semantics which aims at complementing the established theory of domains and denotational semantics to form a coherent whole. It is shown that, if the operational rules of a programming language can be modelled as a natural transformation of a suitable general form, depending on functorial notions of syntax and behaviour, then one gets both an operational model and a canonical, internally fully abstract denotational model for free; moreover, both models satisfy the operational rules. The theory is based on distributive laws and bialgebras; it specialises to the known classes of well-behaved rules for structural operational semantics, such as GSOS.

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We set up a formal framework to describe transition system specifications in the style of Plotkin. This framework has the power to express many-sortedness, general binding mechanisms and substitutions, among other notions such as negative hypotheses and unary predicates on terms. The framework is used to present a conservativity format in operational semantics, which states sufficient criteria to ensure that the extension of a transition system specification with new transition rules does not affect the semantics of the original terms.

A novel form of labelled transition system is proposed, where the labels are the arrows of a category, and adjacent labels in computations are required to be composable. Such transition systems provide the foundations for modular SOS descriptions of programming languages. Three

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Traditionally, in process calculi, relations over open terms, i.e., terms with free process variables, are defined as extensions of closed-term relations: two open terms are related if and only if all their closed instantiations are related. Working in the context of bisimulation, in this paper we study a different approach; we define semantic models for open terms, so-called conditional transition systems, and define bisimulation directly on those models. It turns out that this can be done in at least two different ways, one giving rise to De Simone's formal hypothesis bisimilarity and the other to a variation which we call hypothesis-preserving bisimilarity (denoted t fh and t hp, respectively). For open terms, we have (strict) inclusions t fh /t hp / t ci (the latter denoting the standard ``closed instance' ' extension); for closed terms, the three coincide. Each of these relations is a congruence in the usual sense. We also give an alternative characterisation of t hp in terms of nonconditional transitions, as substitution-closed bisimilarity (denoted t sb). Finally, we study the issue of recursion congruence: we prove that each of the above relations is a congruence with respect to the recursion operator; however, for t ci this result holds under more restrictive conditions than for tfh and thp.]

) Peter D. Mosses 1;2 1 BRICS and Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark 2 Visiting SRI International and Stanford University, USA Abstract. A novel form of labelled transition system is proposed, where the labels are the arrows of a category, and adjacent labels in computations are required to be composable. Such transition systems provide the foundations for modular SOS descriptions of programming languages. Three fundamental ways of transforming label categories, analogous to monad transformers, are provided, and it is shown that their applications preserve computations in modular SOS. The approach is illustrated with fragments taken from a modular SOS for ML concurrency primitives. 1 Introduction SOS (structural operational semantics) is a widely-used framework for defining process algebras [12, e.g.] and programming languages [13, e.g.]. Following Plotkin [22], SOS has often been preferred to the more abstract framework of denotational seman...

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This article presents a congruence format, in structural operational semantics, for rooted branching bisimulation equivalence. The format imposes additional requirements on Groote’s ntyft format. It extends an earlier format by Bloom with standard notions such as recursion, iteration, predicates, and negative premises. 1

We present a coalgebraic approach to trace equivalence semantics based on lifting behaviour endofunctors for deterministic action to Kleisli categories of monads for non-deterministic choice. In Set , this gives a category with ordinary transition systems as objects and with morphisms characterised in terms of a linear notion of bisimulation. The final object in this category is the canonical abstract model for trace equivalence and can be obtained by extending the final coalgebra of the deterministic action behaviour to the Kleisli category of the non-empty powerset monad. The corresponding final coalgebra semantics is fully abstract with respect to trace equivalence.