Person. Paul-André Melliès

Papers

Syntax and semantics of focalisation with relative monads and comonads mangel-2026-syntax

The logical principles of focalisation and polarisation can be used to design well-behaved term syntaxes for sequent calculus, which play a role as meta-languages for describing effectful computation. On the semantics side, this corresponds to an axiomatic and polarised notion of model of computation stated in terms of adjunctions over non-associative categories. In this paper, we study the special and delicate cases of resource and effect modalities in a general intuitionistic and linear setting: an exponential comonad ! (refining □) and a strong monad ◊. The starting point of our contribution is noticing that the completeness for a polarised syntax for ! and ◊ with respect to (co)monads in linear call-by-push-value models can be achieved if we move to relative (co)monads: more precisely, comonads relative to ↓ (the positive shift functor) for ! and monads relative to ↑ (the negative shift functor) for ◊. These specialisations of the concept of relative (co)monad to call-by-push-value adjunctions recently appeared. Yet the syntax we present arose from proof-theoretic consideration, without the link with relative (co)monads being noticed at the time. Our first remark is thus that (co)monads relative to a call-by-push-value adjunction have been motivated previously from a proof-theoretic perspective in the context of focalisation, which also provides a meta-language for these concepts in an effectful setting. We carry out the study of these modalities from the axiomatic, non-associative point of view. We recall the notion of adjunction over non-associative categories, and establish correspondence results between this notion of adjunction and that of relative adjunction. This correspondence is then extended to linear-non-linear and strong versions of adjunctions as needed to model ! and ◊.
arXiv

Classical Notions of Computation and the Hasegawa-Thielecke Theorem mangel-2026-classical

In the spirit of the Curry-Howard correspondence between proofs and programs, we define and study a syntax and semantics for classical logic equipped with a computationally involutive negation, using a polarised effect calculus, the linear classical L -calculus. A main challenge in designing a denotational semantics for the calculus is to accommodate both call-by-value and call-by-name evaluation strategies, which leads to a failure of associativity of composition. In order to tackle this issue, we define a notion of adjunction between graph morphisms on non-associative categories, which we use to formulate polarized and non-associative notions of symmetric monoidal closed duploid and of dialogue duploid. We show that they provide a direct style counterpart to adjunction models: linear effect adjunctions for the (linear) call-by-push-value calculus and dialogue chiralities for linear continuations, respectively. In particular, we show that the syntax of the linear classical L -calculus can be interpreted in any dialogue duploid, and that it defines in fact a syntactic dialogue duploid. As an application, we establish, by semantic as well as syntactic means, the Hasegawa-Thielecke theorem, which states that the notions of central map and of thunkable map coincide in any dialogue duploid (in particular, for any double negation monad on a symmetric monoidal category).
PDF · DOI · arXiv · pldb

The categorical contours of the Chomsky-Schützenberger representation theorem mellies-2025-the

We develop fibrational perspectives on context-free grammars and on nondeterministic finite-state automata over categories and operads. A generalized CFG is a functor from a free colored operad (aka multicategory) generated by a pointed finite species into an arbitrary base operad: this encompasses classical CFGs by taking the base to be a certain operad constructed from a free monoid, as an instance of a more general construction of an operad of spliced arrows 𝒲︀𝒞︀ for any category 𝒞︀. A generalized NFA is a functor from an arbitrary bipointed category or pointed operad satisfying the unique lifting of factorizations and finite fiber properties: this encompasses classical word automata and tree automata without 𝜖-transitions, but also automata over non-free categories and operads. We show that generalized context-free and regular languages satisfy suitable generalizations of many of the usual closure properties, and in particular we give a simple conceptual proof that context-free languages are closed under intersection with regular languages. Finally, we observe that the splicing functor 𝒲︀:Cat→Oper admits a left adjoint 𝒞︀:Oper→Cat, which we call the contour category construction since the arrows of 𝒞︀𝒪︀ have a geometric interpretation as oriented contours of operations of 𝒪︀. A direct consequence of the contour / splicing adjunction is that every pointed finite species induces a universal CFG generating a language of tree contour words. This leads us to a generalization of the Chomsky-Schützenberger Representation Theorem, establishing that a subset of a homset 𝐿⊆𝒞︀(𝐴,𝐵) is a CFL of arrows if and only if it is a functorial image of the intersection of a 𝒞︀-chromatic tree contour language with a regular language.
DOI · arXiv

Convolution Products on Double Categories and Categorification of Rule Algebras behr-2023-convolution

Motivated by compositional categorical rewriting theory, we introduce a convolution product over presheaves of double categories which generalizes the usual Day tensor product of presheaves of monoidal categories. One interesting aspect of the construction is that this convolution product is in general only oplax associative. For that reason, we identify several classes of double categories for which the convolution product is not just oplax associative, but fully associative. This includes in particular framed bicategories on the one hand, and double categories of compositional rewriting theories on the other. For the latter, we establish a formula which justifies the view that the convolution product categorifies the rule algebra product.
DOI

Parsing as a lifting problem and the Chomsky-Schützenberger representation theorem mellis_zeilberger_2022

We begin by explaining how any context-free grammar encodes a functor of operads from a freely generated operad into a certain “operad of spliced words”. This motivates a more general notion of CFG over any category 𝐶, defined as a finite species 𝑆 equipped with a color denoting the start symbol and a functor of operads 𝑝:𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑒[𝑆]→𝑊[𝐶] into the operad of spliced arrows in 𝐶. We show that many standard properties of CFGs can be formulated within this framework, and that usual closure properties of CF languages generalize to CF languages of arrows. We also discuss a dual fibrational perspective on the functor 𝑝 via the notion of “displayed” operad, corresponding to a lax functor of operads 𝑊[𝐶]→𝑆𝑝𝑎𝑛(𝑆𝑒𝑡).

We then turn to the Chomsky-Schützenberger Representation Theorem. We describe how a non-deterministic finite state automaton can be seen as a category 𝑄 equipped with a pair of objects denoting initial and accepting states and a functor of categories 𝑄→𝐶 satisfying the unique lifting of factorizations property and the finite fiber property. Then, we explain how to extend this notion of automaton to functors of operads, which generalize tree automata, allowing us to lift an automaton over a category to an automaton over its operad of spliced arrows. We show that every CFG over a category can be pulled back along a ND finite state automaton over the same category, and hence that CF languages are closed under intersection with regular languages. The last important ingredient is the identification of a left adjoint 𝐶[−]:𝑂𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑑→𝐶𝑎𝑡 to the operad of spliced arrows functor, building the “contour category” of an operad. Using this, we generalize the C-S representation theorem, proving that any context-free language of arrows over a category 𝐶 is the functorial image of the intersection of a 𝐶-chromatic tree contour language and a regular language.

DOI · arXiv

An Isbell duality theorem for type refinement systems mellies-2017-an

Any refinement system (= functor) has a fully faithful representation in the refinement system of presheaves, by interpreting types as relative slice categories, and refinement types as presheaves over those categories. Motivated by an analogy between side effects in programming and context effects in linear logic, we study logical aspects of this ‘positive’ (covariant) representation, as well as of an associated ‘negative’ (contravariant) representation. We establish several preservation properties for these representations, including a generalization of Day’s embedding theorem for monoidal closed categories. Then, we establish that the positive and negative representations satisfy an Isbell-style duality. As corollaries, we derive two different formulas for the positive representation of a pushforward (inspired by the classical negative translations of proof theory), which express it either as the dual of a pullback of a dual or as the double dual of a pushforward. Besides explaining how these constructions on refinement systems generalize familiar category-theoretic ones (by viewing categories as special refinement systems), our main running examples involve representations of Hoare logic and linear sequent calculus.
DOI · arXiv

Functors are type refinement systems mellies_zeilberger_2015

The standard reading of type theory through the lens of category theory is based on the idea of viewing a type system as a category of well-typed terms. We propose a basic revision of this reading: rather than interpreting type systems as categories, we describe them as functors from a category of typing derivations to a category of underlying terms. Then, turning this around, we explain how in fact any functor gives rise to a generalized type system, with an abstract notion of typing judgment, typing derivations and typing rules. This leads to a purely categorical reformulation of various natural classes of type systems as natural classes of functors.

The main purpose of this paper is to describe the general framework (which can also be seen as providing a categorical analysis of refinement types), and to present a few applications. As a larger case study, we revisit Reynolds’ paper on “The Meaning of Types” (2000), showing how the paper’s main results may be reconstructed along these lines.

PDF · DOI · pldb

Type refinement and monoidal closed bifibrations mellies_zeilberger_2013

The concept of refinement in type theory is a way of reconciling the “intrinsic” and the “extrinsic” meanings of types. We begin with a rigorous analysis of this concept, settling on the simple conclusion that the type-theoretic notion of “type refinement system” may be identified with the category-theoretic notion of “functor”. We then use this correspondence to give an equivalent type-theoretic formulation of Grothendieck’s definition of (bi)fibration, and extend this to a definition of monoidal closed bifibrations, which we see as a natural space in which to study the properties of proofs and programs. Our main result is a representation theorem for strong monads on a monoidal closed fibration, describing sufficient conditions for a monad to be isomorphic to a continuations monad “up to pullback”.
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