Subject Reduction and Minimal Types for Higher Order Subtyping

We define the typed lambda calculus Fω ∧ , a natural generalization of Girard’s system F with intersection types and bounded polymorphism. A novel aspect of our presentation is the use of term rewriting techniques to present intersection types, which clearly splits the computational semantics (reduction rules) from the syntax (inference rules) of the system. We establish properties such as Church-Rosser for the reduction relation on types and terms, and Strong Normalization for the reduction on types. We prove that types are preserved by computation (Subject Reduction property), and that the system satisfies the Minimal Types property. On the way to establishing these results, we define algorithms for type inference and subtype checking.