Characterising strongly normalising intuitionistic terms

Abstract

This paper gives a characterisation, via intersection types, of the strongly normalising proof-terms of an intuitionistic sequent calculus (where LJ easily embeds). The soundness of the typing system is reduced to that of a well known typing system with intersection types for the ordinary λ-calculus. The completeness of the typing system is obtained from subject expansion at root position. Next we use our result to analyze the characterisation of strong normalisability for three classes of intuitionistic terms: ordinary λ-terms, ΛJ-terms (λ-terms with generalised application), and λx-terms (λ-terms with explicit substitution). We explain via our system why the type systems in the natural deduction format for ΛJ and λx known from the literature contain extra, exceptional rules for typing generalised application or substitution; and we show a new characterisation of the β-strongly normalising λ-terms, as a corollary to a PSN-result, relating the λ-calculus and the intuitionistic sequent calculus. Finally, we obtain variants of our characterisation by restricting the set of assignable types to sub-classes of intersection types, notably strict types. In addition, the known characterisation of the β-strongly normalising λ-terms in terms of assignment of strict types follows as an easy corollary of our results.