Type reconstruction in F-omega is undecidable

We investigate the Girard's calculus Fω as a “Curry style” type assignment system for pure lambda terms. We prove that the type-reconstruction problem for Fω is undecidable (even with quantification restricted to constructor variables of rank 1). In addition, we show an example of a strongly normalizable pure lambda term that is untypable in Fω.

[1]  Henk Barendregt,et al.  Types in Lambda Calculi and Programming Languages , 1990, ESOP.

[2]  Frank Pfenning,et al.  Partial polymorphic type inference and higher-order unification , 1988, LISP and Functional Programming.

[3]  Paola Giannini,et al.  Type Inference: Some Results, Some Problems , 1993, Fundamenta Informaticae.

[4]  Hans-Juergen Boehm Partial Polymorphic Type Inference Is Undecidable , 1985, FOCS.

[5]  Jerzy Tiuryn,et al.  Type Reconstruction in Finite Rank Fragments of the Second-Order lambda-Calculus , 1992, Inf. Comput..

[6]  Harry G. Mairson Deciding ML typability is complete for deterministic exponential time , 1989, POPL '90.

[7]  Jean-Yves Girard,et al.  The System F of Variable Types, Fifteen Years Later , 1986, Theor. Comput. Sci..

[8]  Daniel Leivant,et al.  Polymorphic type inference , 1983, POPL '83.

[9]  Harry G. Mairson,et al.  Unification and ML-Type Reconstruction , 1991, Computational Logic - Essays in Honor of Alan Robinson.

[10]  Sophie Malecki,et al.  Generic Terms Having No Polymorphic Types , 1990, ICALP.

[11]  Fritz Henglein,et al.  A lower bound for full polymorphic type inference: Girard-Reynolds Typability is DEXPTIME-hard , 1990 .

[12]  Paola Giannini,et al.  Type Inference in Polymorphic Type Discipline , 1991, TACS.

[13]  Harry G. Mairson,et al.  The complexity of type inference for higher-order lambda calculi , 1991, POPL '91.

[14]  John C. Mitchell,et al.  Polymorphic unification and ML typing , 1989, POPL '89.

[15]  Paola Giannini,et al.  Characterization of typings in polymorphic type discipline , 1988, [1988] Proceedings. Third Annual Information Symposium on Logic in Computer Science.

[16]  T. Coquand,et al.  Metamathematical investigations of a calculus of constructions , 1989 .

[17]  Benjamin C. Pierce,et al.  Programming in higher-order typed lambda-calculi , 1989 .