Algebraic semantics for functional logic programming with polymorphic order-sorted types

Abstract

In this paper we present the semantics of a functional logic language with parametric and order-sorted polymorphism. Typed programs consist of a polymorphic signature and a set of constructor-based conditional rewriting rules for which we define a semantic calculus. The denotational semantics of the language is based on Scott domains interpreting constructors and functions by monotonic and continuous mappings, respectively, in every instance of the declared type. We prove initiality results for the free ground term algebra. We also prove that the free term algebra with variables is freely generated in the category of models. The semantic calculus is proved to be sound and complete w.r.t. the denotational semantics. As in logic programming, we define the immediate consequence operator, proving that the Hebrand model is the least model of a program.