In a previous work ("Abstract Data Type Systems", TCS 173(2), 1997), the last
two authors presented a combined language made of a (strongly normalizing)
algebraic rewrite system and a typed lambda-calculus enriched by
pattern-matching definitions following a certain format, called the "General
Schema", which generalizes the usual recursor definitions for natural numbers
and similar "basic inductive types". This combined language was shown to be
strongly normalizing. The purpose of this paper is to reformulate and extend
the General Schema in order to make it easily extensible, to capture a more
general class of inductive types, called "strictly positive", and to ease the
strong normalization proof of the resulting system. This result provides a
computation model for the combination of an algebraic specification language
based on abstract data types and of a strongly typed functional language with
strictly positive inductive types.Comment: Theoretical Computer Science (2002