# Nottingham FP Lab Blog

## Categorical Semantics of Dependent Type Theory

by nicolai on February 7, 2013.
Tagged as: Type theory meetings.

In the Type Theory meeting last week, I have given an overview over the categorical semantics of dependent type theory. The semantics of the simply typed lambda calculus are well-known and generally accepted, but this is not so much true for the dependently typed setting. Also, it is not so easy to state the conditions on a category $$\mathbb C$$ to be suitable for the construction of a model. Often, people just say that $$\mathbb C$$ should be locally cartesian closed. This makes a lot of sense, but is neither really sufficient, nor necessary. However, for the moment, it is a good description for $$\mathbb C$$.

We interpret every (valid) context as an object in $$\mathbb C$$. For the simply typed lambda calculus, it is not too important to distinguish between contexts and types. This is more subtle for dependent types, as not every type is closed. We have typing judgments $\Gamma \vdash A \textit{ : type},$ and from such a judgment, we get a new valid context, often written $$\Gamma.A$$, the context extension. We interprete this judgment as a morphism between these contexts: $[[ \Gamma \vdash A \textit{ : type} ]] \; : \; [[ \Gamma.A ]] \to [[ \Gamma ]].$ One should think of this map as a projection, that "projects A away". Being lazy, one also writes $$[[A]]$$ instead of the rather long expression above. In the simply typed setting, one usually models types as objects. Equivalently, one could model a type as the unique morphism from the object to the terminal object.

If we have the type judgment above, we can also have a term of this type, $\Gamma \vdash t \, : \, A .$ We model this judgment as a section of the type judgment, i.e. it is a morphism from $$[[\Gamma ]]$$ to $$[[\Gamma.A]]$$ such that $[[ \Gamma \vdash A \textit{ : type} ]] \; \circ \; [[ \Gamma \vdash t \, : \, A]] \; = \; \operatorname{id}_{[[\Gamma]]},$ or just $$[[A]] \circ [[t]]$$ in the lazy version.

The nice thing is that we can do many things in the same way as it works for the simply typed case; we just need to restrict ourselves to the slice category over $$[[\Gamma]]$$, if we work in context $$\Gamma$$. For example, for the simply typed lambda calculus, we use exponentials to model function types. Note that the functor "$$A\to$$", or $$\_^A$$, is right adjoint to the product functor $$\_ \times A$$. The product with $$[[A]]$$ in the slice over $$[[\Gamma]]$$ is nothing else but the pullback along $$[[A]]$$, let us write $$A^*$$, and we get dependent function types as the right adjoints of these pullbacks. Similarly, we get dependent sums as left adjoints of these pullbacks. Summarized, we have $\Sigma_A \dashv A^* \dashv \Pi_A.$ One can convince oneself that this makes sense by drawing a couple of diagrams.

I think these semantics have first been described by Seely. “Locally Cartesian Closed Categories and Type Theory”, and have since then often been discussed; in particular, there is a coherence problem (things that hold strictly in type theory can, by default, only be described up to isomorphism in category theory). The (arguable) cleanest solution for this problem is a universe construction by Voevodsky. The plan is that more detailed semantics, together with this construction, the presheaf of simplicial sets, and univalence, will be the topics of the Type & Homotopy Theory meetings, as well as the Sheaf Theory seminars, in the next two weeks.