Abstract

In the polymorphic -calculus, one may explicitly define functions that take a type as input and return a term as output. This work focuses on how such functions depend on their input types. Indeed, these functions are generally understood to have an essentially constant meaning on input types. We show how the proof theory of the polymorphic -calculus suggests a clear syntactic description of this phenomenon. Namely, under a reasonable condition, we show that if two polymorphic functions agree on an input type, then they are, in fact, the same function. Equivalently, types are generic inputs to polymorphic functions. R esum e Dans le -calcul polymorphe, on peut explicitement definir des fonctions qui prennent un type comme argument et qui renvoient un terme comme resultat. Le but de ce travail est de mieux comprendre la dependance de ces fonctions vis-a-vis de leurs arguments types. En effet, ces fonctions sont generalement considerees comme etant essentiellement constantes par rapport ...

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