Denotation of contextual modal type theory (CMTT): Syntax and meta-programming

The modal logic S4 can be used via a Curry-Howard style correspondence to obtain a λcalculus. Modal (boxed) types are intuitively interpreted as ‘closed syntax of the calculus’. This λ-calculus is called modal type theory — this is the basic case of a more general contextual modal type theory, or CMTT. CMTT has never been given a denotational semantics in which modal types are given denotation as closed syntax. We show how this can indeed be done, with a twist. We also use the denotation to prove some properties of the system.