Towards a Higher-Order Mathematical Operational Semantics

Goncharov S, Milius S, Schröder L, Tsampas S, Urbat H (2023)


Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2023

Journal

Book Volume: 7

Pages Range: 632-658

DOI: 10.1145/3571215

Abstract

Compositionality proofs in higher-order languages are notoriously involved, and general semantic frameworks guaranteeing compositionality are hard to come by. In particular, Turi and Plotkin's bialgebraic abstract GSOS framework, which has been successfully applied to obtain off-The-shelf compositionality results for first-order languages, so far does not apply to higher-order languages. In the present work, we develop a theory of abstract GSOS specifications for higher-order languages, in effect transferring the core principles of Turi and Plotkin's framework to a higher-order setting. In our theory, the operational semantics of higher-order languages is represented by certain dinatural transformations that we term pointed higher-order GSOS laws. We give a general compositionality result that applies to all systems specified in this way and discuss how compositionality of the SKI calculus and the λ-calculus w.r.t. a strong variant of Abramsky's applicative bisimilarity are obtained as instances.

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How to cite

APA:

Goncharov, S., Milius, S., Schröder, L., Tsampas, S., & Urbat, H. (2023). Towards a Higher-Order Mathematical Operational Semantics. Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, 7, 632-658. https://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3571215

MLA:

Goncharov, Sergey, et al. "Towards a Higher-Order Mathematical Operational Semantics." Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages 7 (2023): 632-658.

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