[TYPES] theorems on termination of reduction
Jeremy Dawson
Jeremy.Dawson at nicta.com.au
Thu Nov 4 10:55:46 EST 2004
Dear all,
There are two related theorems:
(1) Rewriting of combinator expressions according to the rules
such as
I x -> x
W f x -> f x x
S x y z -> x z (y z)
terminates if the terms are well-typed, but not in general.
(2) the termination of beta-reduction in the simply-typed lambda calculus
It's easy to see that (1) is provable from (2), simply
by expressing I, W, S, etc as lambda-terms
I would guess that to prove (2) from (1) is possible, and not very deep,
(since a lambda-term is expressible using S,K,I)
but it seems nonetheless tedious, since one has to show that *any*
beta-reduction step in lambda-terms corresponds to one or more
reduction steps in the combinator expressions
Can anyone give me a source for a proof of (2) from (1)?
Thanks
Jeremy Dawson
PS Thanks also to all those who repsonded to my query a few months ago
about a direct proof of (1) (ie not from (2))
PPS - FYI I've now worked out how to do (1) as a corollary of some work
I've done
(now being written up) on termination of rewriting in a more general context
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