PCF is a sequential simply typed lambda calculus language. There is a unique
order-extensional fully abstract cpo model of PCF, built up from equivalence
classes of terms. In 1979, G\'erard Berry defined the stable order in this
model and proved that the extensional and the stable order together form a
bicpo. He made the following two conjectures: 1) "Extensional and stable order
form not only a bicpo, but a bidomain." We refute this conjecture by showing
that the stable order is not bounded complete, already for finitary PCF of
second-order types. 2) "The stable order of the model has the syntactic order
as its image: If a is less than b in the stable order of the model, for finite
a and b, then there are normal form terms A and B with the semantics a, resp.
b, such that A is less than B in the syntactic order." We give counter-examples
to this conjecture, again in finitary PCF of second-order types, and also
refute an improved conjecture: There seems to be no simple syntactic
characterization of the stable order. But we show that Berry's conjecture is
true for unary PCF. For the preliminaries, we explain the basic fully abstract
semantics of PCF in the general setting of (not-necessarily complete) partial
order models (f-models.) And we restrict the syntax to "game terms", with a
graphical representation.Comment: submitted to LMCS, 39 pages, 23 pstricks/pst-tree figures, main
changes for this version: 4.1: proof of game term theorem corrected, 7.: the
improved chain conjecture is made precise, more references adde
