Distributive Laws and Decidable Properties of SOS Specifications

Some formats of well-behaved operational specifications, correspond to natural transformations of certain types (for example, GSOS and coGSOS laws). These transformations have a common generalization: distributive laws of monads over comonads. We prove that this elegant theoretical generalization has limited practical benefits: it does not translate to any concrete rule format that would be complete for specifications that contain both GSOS and coGSOS rules. This is shown for the case of labeled transition systems and deterministic stream systems.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2014, arXiv:1408.127

Recursive Program Schemes and Context-Free Monads

AbstractSolutions of recursive program schemes over a given signature Σ were characterized by Bruno Courcelle as precisely the context-free (or algebraic) Σ-trees. These are the finite and infinite Σ-trees yielding, via labelling of paths, context-free languages. Our aim is to generalize this to finitary endofunctors H of general categories: we construct a monad CH “generated” by solutions of recursive program schemes of type H, and prove that this monad is ideal. In case of polynomial endofunctors of Set our construction precisely yields the monad of context-free Σ-trees of Courcelle. Our result builds on a result by N. Ghani et al on solutions of algebraic systems

An abstract view on syntax with sharing

The notion of term graph encodes a refinement of inductively generated syntax in which regard is paid to the the sharing and discard of subterms. Inductively generated syntax has an abstract expression in terms of initial algebras for certain endofunctors on the category of sets, which permits one to go beyond the set-based case, and speak of inductively generated syntax in other settings. In this paper we give a similar abstract expression to the notion of term graph. Aspects of the concrete theory are redeveloped in this setting, and applications beyond the realm of sets discussed.Comment: 26 pages; v2: final journal versio

Lawvere theories enriched over a general base

AbstractWe generalise the correspondence between Lawvere theories and finitary monads on Set in two ways. First, we allow our theories to be enriched in a category V that is locally finitely presentable as a symmetric monoidal closed category: symmetry is convenient but not necessary. And second, we allow the arities of our theories to be finitely presentable objects of a locally finitely presentable V-category A. We call the resulting notion that of a Lawvere A-theory. We extend the correspondence for ordinary Lawvere theories to one between Lawvere A-theories and finitary V-monads on A. We illustrate this with examples leading up to that of the Lawvere Cat-theory for cartesian closed categories, i.e., the Set-enriched theory on the category Cat for which the models are all small cartesian closed categories. We also briefly investigate change-of-base

An Algebraic Theory of Markov Processes

Markov processes are a fundamental model of probabilistic transition systems and are the underlying semantics of probabilistic programs.We give an algebraic axiomatisation of Markov processes using the framework of quantitative equational logic introduced in [13]. We present the theory in a structured way using work of Hyland et al. [9] on combining monads. We take the interpolative barycentric algebras of [13] which captures the Kantorovich metric and combine it with a theory of contractive operators to give the required axiomatisation of Markov processes both for discrete and continuous state spaces. This work apart from its intrinsic interest shows how one can extend the general notion of combining effects to the quantitative setting

A Coalgebraic Semantics for Imperative Programming Languages

In the theory of programming languages, one often takes two complementary perspectives. In operational semantics, one defines and reasons about the behaviour of programs; and in denotational semantics, one abstracts away implementation details, and reasons about programs as mathematical objects or denotations. The denotational semantics should be compositional, meaning that denotations of programs are determined by the denotations of their parts. It should also be adequate with respect to operational equivalence: programs with the same denotation should be behaviourally indistinguishable. One often has to prove adequacy and compositionality independently for different languages, and the proofs are often laborious and repetitive. These proofs were provided systematically in the context of process algebras by the mathematical operational semantics framework of Turi and Plotkin – which represented transition systems as coalgebras, and program syntax by free algebras; operational specifications were given by distributive laws of syntax over behaviour. By framing the semantics on this abstract level, one derives denotational and operational semantics which are guaranteed to be adequate and compositional for a wide variety of examples. However, despite speculation on the possibility, it is hard to apply the framework to programming languages, because one obtains undesirably fine-grained behavioural equivalences, and unconventional notions of operational semantics. Moreover, the behaviour of these languages is often formalised in a different way – such as computational effects, which may be thought of as an interface between programs and external factors such as non-determinism or a variable store; and comodels, or transition systems which implement these effects. This thesis adapts the mathematical operational semantics framework to provide semantics for various classes of programming languages. After identifying the need for such an adaptation, we show how program behaviour may be characterised by final coalgebras in suitably order- enriched Kleisli categories. We define both operational and denotational semantics, first for languages with syntactic effects, and then for languages with effects and/or comodels given by a Lawvere theory. To ensure adequacy and compositionality, we define concrete and abstract operational rule-formats for these languages, based on the idea of evaluation-in-context; we give syntactic and then categorical proofs that those properties are guaranteed by operational specifications in these rule-formats.Open Acces

Algebras, Coalgebras, Monads and Comonads

Whilst the relationship between initial algebras and monads is well-understood, the relationship between nal coalgebras and comonads is less well explored. This paper shows that the problem is more subtle and that final coalgebras can just as easily form monads as comonads and dually, that initial algebras form both monads and comonads. In developing these theories we strive to provide them with an associated notion of syntax. In the case of initial algebras and monads this corresponds to the standard notion of algebraic theories consisting of signatures and equations: models of such algebraic theories are precisely the algebras of the representing monad. We attempt to emulate this result for the coalgebraic case by defining a notion cosignature and coequation and then proving the models of this syntax are precisely the coalgebras of the representing comonad