Decidable structures between Church-style and Curry-style

It is well-known that the type-checking and type-inference problems are undecidable for second order lambda-calculus in Curry-style, although those for Church-style are decidable. What causes the differences in decidability and undecidability on the problems? We examine crucial conditions on terms for the (un)decidability property from the viewpoint of partially typed terms, and what kinds of type annotations are essential for (un)decidability of type-related problems. It is revealed that there exists an intermediate structure of second order lambda-terms, called a style of hole-application, between Church-style and Curry-style, such that the type-related problems are decidable under the structure. We also extend this idea to the omega-order polymorphic calculus F-omega, and show that the type-checking and type-inference problems then become undecidable

CPS-translation as adjoint

AbstractWe show that there exist translations between polymorphic λ-calculus and a subsystem of minimal logic with existential types, which form a Galois insertion (embedding). The translation from polymorphic λ-calculus into the existential type system is the so-called call-by-name CPS-translation that can be expounded as an adjoint from the neat connection. The construction of an inverse translation is investigated from a viewpoint of residuated mappings. The duality appears not only in the reduction relations but also in the proof structures, such as paths between the source and the target calculi. From a programming point of view, this result means that abstract data types can interpret polymorphic functions under the CPS-translation. We may regard abstract data types as a dual notion of polymorphic functions