Higher-Order Mathematical Operational Semantics

Compositionality proofs in higher-order languages are notoriously involved, and general semantic frameworks guaranteeing compositionality are hard to come by. In particular, Turi and Plotkin's bialgebraic abstract GSOS framework, which provides off-the-shelf compositionality results for first-order languages, so far does not apply to higher-order languages. In the present work, we develop a theory of abstract GSOS specifications for higher-order languages, in effect transferring the core principles of Turi and Plotkin's framework to a higher-order setting. In our theory, the operational semantics of higher-order languages is represented by certain dinatural transformations that we term (pointed) higher-order GSOS laws. We give a general compositionality result that applies to all systems specified in this way and discuss how compositionality of combinatory logics and the λ-calculus w.r.t. a strong variant of Abramsky's applicative bisimilarity are obtained as instances.