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	   Integrating Concurrent, Functional and Imperative
	      Programming Paradigms: Semantic Foundations

  This PhD Thesis (University of Paris XI, Centre d'Orsay, defence
date: July 1st 1994) is now available upon request from the author Dr. 
M. Debabi (Bull Corporate Research Center, Clayes-Sous-Bois, France).
Also please notice that the thesis is written in *French*. For those
interested in getting a copy, please send your request *by e-mail* to:
   debabi@frcl.bull.fr
  The aim of this work is to provide theoretical foundations for the 
unification of three paradigms. More accurately, the aim is to 
experiment with some ideas in an ML-like language extended with 
concurrency features. Thus, the language considered may be viewed as a
sugared version of the call-by-value typed lambda-calculus that safely
incorporates imperative and concurrent extensions. The language is 
polymorphic, implicitly typed and supports both functional and process
abstractions. The language embodies a CSP-like process algebra which 
provides a set of concurrency combinators (internal choice, external 
choice, parallel composition and sequencing) used to compose 
expressions. A set of imperative aspects are also included in order to
support mutable data. 
  To sum up, the main contributions are:
 o  A new typing discipline based on the reconstruction of principal
    types together with minimal side and communication effects.
 o  An extension of this discipline in order to cover declarations, 
    patter-matching definitions, exceptions, etc.
 o  An operational semantics for a concurrent functional and 
    imperative programming language. 
 o  A denotational model for the above mentioned language, based on 
    an accommodation of the acceptance trees model for handling
    communication, value-passing, assignment, return of results, 
    dynamic creation of channels and processes, polymorphism and 
    higher order objects.
 o  A semantic handling of the typing aspects and polymorphism at the
    dynamic level.
 o  A lifting of the static semantics as well as the two dynamic
    semantics to a CML core syntax.