Strong normalization property for second order linear logic

  • Authors:
  • Michele Pagani;Lorenzo Tortora de Falco

  • Affiliations:
  • Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Torino, Corso Svizzera 185, 10149 Torino, Italy;Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università Roma Tre, Via Ostiense 234, 00144 Roma, Italy

  • Venue:
  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

The paper contains the first complete proof of strong normalization (SN) for full second order linear logic (LL): Girard's original proof uses a standardization theorem which is not proven. We introduce sliced pure structures (sps), a very general version of Girard's proof-nets, and we apply to sps Gandy's method to infer SN from weak normalization (WN). We prove a standardization theorem for sps: if WN without erasing steps holds for an sps, then it enjoys SN. A key step in our proof of standardization is a confluence theorem for sps obtained by using only a very weak form of correctness, namely acyclicity slice by slice. We conclude by showing how standardization for sps allows to prove SN of LL, using as usual Girard's reducibility candidates.