A new approach to inhabitation problems in simply typed lambda-calculus is shown, dealing with both decision and counting problems. This approach works by exploiting a representation of the search space generated by a given inhabitation problem, which is in terms of a lambda-calculus for proof search that the authors developed recently. The representation may be seen as extending the Curry–Howard representation of proofs by lambda terms. Our methodology reveals inductive descriptions of the decision problems, driven by the syntax of the proof-search expressions, and produces simple, recursive decision procedures and counting functions. These allow to predict the number of inhabitants by testing the given type for syntactic criteria. This new approach is comprehensive and robust: based on the same syntactic representation, we also derive the state-of-the-art coherence theorems ensuring uniqueness of inhabitants.

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Variants of Herbelin's λ-calculus, here collectively named Herbelin calculi, have proved useful both in foundational studies and as internal languages for the efficient representation of λ-terms. An obvious requirement of both these two kinds of applications is a clear understanding of the relationship between cut-elimination in Herbelin calculi and normalisation in the λ-calculus. However, this understanding is not complete so far. Our previous work showed that λ is isomorphic to a Herbelin calculus, here named λP, only admitting cuts that are both left-and right-permuted. In this paper we consider a generalisation λPh admitting any kind of right-permuted cut. We show that there is a natural deduction system λN h which conservatively extends λ and is isomorphic to λPh. The idea is to build in the natural deduction system a distinction between applicative term and application, together with a distinction between head and tail application. This is suggested by examining how natural deduction proofs are mapped to sequent calculus derivations according to a translation due to Prawitz. In addition to β, λN h includes a reduction rule that mirrors left permutation of cuts, but without performing any append of lists/spines.

Cut-free proofs in Herbelin's sequent calculus are in 1-1 correspondence with normal natural deduction proofs. For this reason Herbelin's sequent calculus has been considered a privileged middle-point between L-systems and natural deduction. However, this bijection does not extend to proofs containing cuts and Herbelin observed that his cutelimination procedure is not isomorphic to β-reduction. In this paper we equip Herbelin's system with rewrite rules which, at the same time: (1) complete in a sense the cut elimination procedure firstly proposed by Herbelin; and (2) perform the intuitionistic "fragment" of the tq-protocol-a cut-elimination procedure for classical logic defined by Danos, Joinet and Schellinx. Moreover we identify the subcalculus of our system which is isomorphic to natural deduction, the isomorphism being with respect not only to proofs but also to normalisation. Our results show, for the implicational fragment of intuitionistic logic, how to embed natural deduction in the much wider world of sequent calculus and what a particular cut-elimination procedure normalisation is.

This paper gives a characterisation, via intersection types, of the strongly normalising proof-terms of an intuitionistic sequent calculus (where LJ easily embeds). The soundness of the typing system is reduced to that of a well known typing system with intersection types for the ordinary λ-calculus. The completeness of the typing system is obtained from subject expansion at root position. Next we use our result to analyze the characterisation of strong normalisability for three classes of intuitionistic terms: ordinary λ-terms, ΛJ-terms (λ-terms with generalised application), and λx-terms (λ-terms with explicit substitution). We explain via our system why the type systems in the natural deduction format for ΛJ and λx known from the literature contain extra, exceptional rules for typing generalised application or substitution; and we show a new characterisation of the β-strongly normalising λ-terms, as a corollary to a PSN-result, relating the λ-calculus and the intuitionistic sequent calculus. Finally, we obtain variants of our characterisation by restricting the set of assignable types to sub-classes of intersection types, notably strict types. In addition, the known characterisation of the β-strongly normalising λ-terms in terms of assignment of strict types follows as an easy corollary of our results.

We study monadic translations of the call-by-name (cbn) and call-by-value (cbv) fragments of the classical sequent calculus ${\overline{\lambda}\mu\tilde{\mu}}$ due to Curien and Herbelin, and give modular and syntactic proofs of strong normalisation. The target of the translations is a new meta-language for classical logic, named monadic λμ. This language is a monadic reworking of Parigot's λμ-calculus, where the monadic binding is confined to commands, thus integrating the monad with the classical features. Also, its μ-reduction rule is replaced by a rule expressing the interaction between monadic binding and μ-abstraction.Our monadic translations produce very tight simulations of the respective fragments of ${\overline{\lambda}\mu\tilde{\mu}}$ within monadic λμ, with reduction steps of ${\overline{\lambda}\mu\tilde{\mu}}$ being translated in a 1–1 fashion, except for β steps, which require two steps. The monad of monadic λμ can be instantiated to the continuations monad so as to ensure strict simulation of monadic λμ within simply typed λ-calculus with β- and η-reduction. Through strict simulation, the strong normalisation of simply typed λ-calculus is inherited by monadic λμ, and then by cbn and cbv ${\overline{\lambda}\mu\tilde{\mu}}$, thus reproving strong normalisation in an elementary syntactical way for these fragments of ${\overline{\lambda}\mu\tilde{\mu}}$, and establishing it for our new calculus. These results extend to second-order logic, with polymorphic λ-calculus as the target, giving new strong normalisation results for classical second-order logic in sequent calculus style.CPS translations of cbn and cbv ${\overline{\lambda}\mu\tilde{\mu}}$ with the strict simulation property are obtained by composing our monadic translations with the continuations-monad instantiation. In an appendix to the paper, we investigate several refinements of the continuations-monad instantiation in order to obtain in a modular way improvements of the CPS translations enjoying extra properties like simulation by cbv β-reduction or reduction of administrative redexes at compile time.

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This work presents an extension with cuts of Schwichtenberg's multiary sequent calculus. We identify a set of permutative conversions on it, prove their termination and confluence and establish the permutability theorem. We present our sequent calculus as the typing system of the generalised multiary λ-calculus λJ m , a new calculus introduced in this work. λJ m corresponds to an extension of λ-calculus with a notion of generalised multiary application, which may be seen as a function applied to a list of arguments and then explicitly substituted in another term. Proof-theoretically the corresponding typing rule encompasses, in a modular way, generalised eliminations of von Plato and Herbelin's head cuts.