Seventeenth Annual IEEE Symposium on

Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2002)

Paper: Remarks on Isomorphisms in Typed Lambda Calculi with Empty and Sum Types (at LICS 2002)

Authors: Marcelo Fiore Roberto Di Cosmo Vincent Balat

Abstract

Tarski asked whether the arithmetic identities taught in high school are complete for showing all arithmetic equations valid for the natural numbers. The answer to this question for the language of arithmetic expressions using a constant for the number one and the operations of product and exponentiation is affirmative, and the complete equational theory also characterizes isomorphism in the typed lambda calculus, where the constant for one and the operations of product and exponentiation respectively correspond to the unit type and the product and arrow type constructors. This paper studies isomorphisms in typed lambda calculi with empty and sum types from this viewpoint. We close an open problem by establishing that the theory of type isomorphisms in the presence of product, arrow, and sum types (with or without the unit and/or the empty type) is not finitely axiomatizable. Further, we observe that for type theories with arrow, empty and sum types the correspondence between isomorphism and arithmetic equality generally breaks down, but that it still holds in the particular case of type isomorphism with the empty type and equality with zero.

BibTeX

  @InProceedings{FioreDiCosmoBalat-RemarksonIsomorphis,
    author = 	 {Marcelo Fiore and Roberto Di Cosmo and Vincent Balat},
    title = 	 {Remarks on Isomorphisms in Typed Lambda Calculi with Empty and
    Sum Types},
    booktitle =  {Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual IEEE Symp. on Logic in Computer Science, {LICS} 2002},
    year =	 2002,
    editor =	 {Gordon Plotkin},
    month =	 {July}, 
    location =   {Copenhagen, Denmark}, 
    publisher =	 {IEEE Computer Society Press}
  }