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Topic: Formal semantics

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	Formal semantics of programming languages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		In theoretical computer science, formal semantics is the field concerned with the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languages and models of computation.
		The formal semantics of a language is given by a mathematical model that describes the possible computations described by the language.
		Operational semantics loosely corresponds to interpretation, although again the "implementation language" of the interpreter is generally a mathematical formalism.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Formal_semantics_of_programming_languages (711 words)

	Amazon.co.uk: Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings (Linguistics - The Essential Readings): Books: Paul ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		The formal semantics approach to the study of natural language semantics was developed through active dialogue between linguistically minded philosophers and philosophically minded linguists and has become increasingly integrated into theoretical linguistics.
		Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings is a collection of seminal papers that have shaped the field of formal semantics in linguistics.
		Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings is a vital resource for students and scholars of semantics and the philosophy of language.
	www.amazon.co.uk /Formal-Semantics-Essential-Readings-Linguistics/dp/0631215425 (271 words)

	Semantics of logic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Model-theoretic semantics is the archetype of Alfred Tarski's semantic theory of truth, based on his T-schema, and is one of the founding concepts of model theory.
		Model-theoretic semantics provides the foundations for an approach to the theory of meaning known as Truth-conditional semantics, which was pioneered by Donald Davidson.
		Truth-value semantics (also commonly referred to as substitutional quantification) was advocated by Ruth Barcan Marcus for modal logics in the early 1960s and later championed by Dunn, Belnap, and Leblanc for standard first-order logic.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Formal_semantics (416 words)

	The formal approach to meaning
		Our attention will be directed toward what is called 'formal semantics', which is the adaptation to natural language of analytical techniques from logic.[1] The first, background, section of the paper will survey the changing attitudes of linguists toward semantics into the last third of the century.
		The formal languages of logic are strongly compositional, which means that expressions of a given syntactic category all receive the same type of interpretation and contribute in the same way to the interpretation of larger expressions of which they form a part.
		Tarski proposed as a minimal condition on the adequacy of the semantic rules for a language, that they should allow the derivation (that is, the proof, in the logical sense) of the correct T-sentences for all the sentences of the object language.
	www.msu.edu /user/abbottb/formal.htm (7353 words)

	Concept Mapping: Informal to Formal
		These two factors, intuitive understanding and both formal and informal knowledge representation, are of great importance: Both novices and experts can potentially use the same media, novices being free to express themselves informally and without constraint, while experts can express themselves under the constraints of very formal semantics which allows for computational support.
		Untrained users cannot be expected to conform to the constraints of a formal semantics, for they will be frustrated and distracted if they must change their thinking to conform to the structures of a formal system.
		Toward the formal end of the spectrum is KDraw, which imposes a strict set of types on all nodes and arcs (arc types are strict but implicit), however no attention is paid to the semantic content of the nodes.
	pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca /~kremer/papers/ICCS94.html (5723 words)

	CoFI -- Semantics (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		The formal semantics of Casl, which is complete but whose presentation still requires some polishing, is given in [17].
		The orthogonality of basic specifications in Casl with respect to the rest of the language is reflected in the semantics by the use of a variant of the notion of institution [21] called an institution with symbols [35].
		The semantics of basic specifications introduces a particular institution with symbols, and the rest of the semantics is based on an arbitrary institution with symbols.
	www.brics.dk /Projects/CoFI/Semantics.html (421 words)

	XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics
		The goal of the formal semantics is to complement the [XPath/XQuery] specification ([XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language] and [XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0]), by defining the meaning of [XPath/XQuery] expressions with mathematical rigor.
		Rigor is achieved by the use of formal notations to represent [XPath/XQuery] objects such as expressions, XML values, and XML Schema types, and by the systematic definition of the relationships between those objects to reflect the meaning of the language.
		The two main environments used in the Formal Semantics are: a dynamic environment (dynEnv), which models the [XPath/XQuery] dynamic context, and a static environment (statEnv), which models the [XPath/XQuery] static context.
	www.w3.org /TR/query-semantics (7275 words)

	Formal Semantics
		Borschev and Partee on the potential use of meaning postulates to combine the advantages of the explicitness of formal semantics with the "natural" metalanguage of Moscow school lexical semantics.
		Introduction to intensionality, referential opacity, the semantics of modality and of conditional sentences.
		The semantics of subjunctive/indicative alternation in Spanish relative clauses.
	people.umass.edu /partee/RGGU_2005/RGGU05_formal_semantics.htm (1439 words)

	XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Formal Semantics
		The goal of the formal semantics is to complement the [XPath/XQuery] specification ([XQuery 1.0: A Query Language for XML] and [XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0]), by defining the meaning of [XPath/XQuery] expressions with mathematical rigor.
		The two main environment groups used in the Formal Semantics are: a dynamic environment (dynEnv), which captures the [XPath/XQuery]'s dynamic context, and a static environment (statEnv), which captures the [XPath/XQuery]'s static context.
		and is denoted by statEnvDefault in the Formal Semantics.
	www.w3.org /TR/2004/WD-xquery-semantics-20040220 (8704 words)

	Nondeterminism / formal semantics of C
		And once you have such a distinguished semantic element, then you don't need to model the semantics of individual operations with undefined behaviour as bottom (the universal set); they can be denoted by any set containing this distinguished element, and so it could be simpler to use the singleton set containing just that element.
		To: Fergus Henderson Subject: Re: Formal semantics for C Cc: matthias@ccs.neu.edu, kfl@it.edu, types@cis.upenn.edu > > > Compiler optimization researchers perform non-trivial analyses of C > > programs (e.g., a pointer alias analysis) by ducking the issue of unsafe > > operations: the simply assume that unsafe operations are never executed.
		A semantic definition for C that maps all unsafe operations to undefined is misleading for the vast majority of potential applications of the semantics (e.g.
	www.seas.upenn.edu /~sweirich/types/archive/1999-2003/msg00885.html (3957 words)

	Approaches to Formal Semantics (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		Most often, programming language semantics is described informally, in terms of the operations necessary to execute language constructs in terms of basic computer actions (using a simplified or abstract computer model).
		The execution of language constructs is mathematically described in terms of the formalized operations of an abstract machine.
		Translational semantics: the semantics of a language is described by showing how it translates to another, presumably well understood, language.
	www.cs.sfu.ca /~cameron/Teaching/383/SemanticsApproaches.html (393 words)

	XQuery 1.0 Formal Semantics
		Formally, a type is defined to be the (usually infinite) set of instance values that belong to that type.
		In a few cases, the formal semantics makes use of some functions that are not currently in the [XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators] or in the [XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model] documents.
		The semantics of a type is given by the notion of domain, I.e., the set of all values which are instance of that type.
	www.w3.org /TR/2002/WD-query-semantics-20020326 (9095 words)

	formal semantics - Specifying formal semantics in XML languages
		This is critically important as all elements have to have classes, and all attributes have to have typed accessors and mutators.
		At present XSD is used for the specification of CML although we have also attempted to use schematron and XSLT-like expressions for some of the constraints that cannot be expressed in XSD.
		It is important that the semantics are not procedural (we cannot assume that the users have Python, etc.).
	www.stylusstudio.com /xmldev/200606/post90210.html (1192 words)

	FORMAL SEMANTICS AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
		This course introduces the components and formal mechanisms underlying meaning in human language and uses them as a window on the human mind, its psychological development and adult cognitive processes.
		Formal tools from Set Theory and Predicate Logic will be introduced and applied both to the linguistic and to the cognitive characterization of meaning.
		Each stage has two parts: it introduces new formal tools to compute the semantics of increasingly more complex sentences, and it applies the acquired theoretical notions to some topics in Cognitive Science.
	www.ling.upenn.edu /courses/ling255/Ling255.htm (388 words)

	Formal Semantics of Enterprise Models
		The semantics of the constructs of this language should be precisely defined so that different people communicating or exchanging models understand them the same way.
		A formal description technique for specifying semantics of UEML constructs as well as the semantic specification of UEML (to be used by tool developers).
		Semantics of the constructs should be shared among users and formally stated.
	www.mel.nist.gov /msidevent/workshop/iceimt97/ws4/ws4-wg2.html (1624 words)

	Eidola semantics
		Since Eidola is representation-independent, the semantics not only represents the language, but actually is the language---implementations represent the semantics instead of the reverse.
		You can learn more in the semantics reference, and in a soon-to-be-written fascinating treatise on the reasoning behind the semantics.
		In the future: It would be interesting to study at some point the mathematical properties of the semantics, such as proving its consistency, or drawing illuminating correspondences between the semantics and algebraic structures like groups and categories.
	eidola.org /semantics (316 words)

	FMOODS W3: Accepted Papers (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		This abstract semantics is used to clarify possible ambiguities of the informal definitions of JavaSpaces, to discuss possible implementation choices and to compare the expressive power of the new primitives.
		The formal semantics of BOTL is defined in terms of a general operational model that is aimed to be applicable to a wide range of object-oriented languages.
		We discuss aspects of semantics of mobile components in view of the dynamic changes that may occur within the open environment while the component is executing.
	www-formal.stanford.edu /fmoods/abstracts.html (2864 words)

	Amazon.com: Formal Semantics of Programming Languages: Books: Glynn Winskel (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages provides the basic mathematical techniques necessary for those who are beginning a study of the semantics and logics of programming languages.
		Denotational and axiomatic semantics are illustrated on a simple language of while-programs, and fall proofs are given of the equivalence of the operational and denotational semantics and soundness and relative completeness of the axiomatic semantics.
		Throughout, the relationship between denotational and operational semantics is stressed, and the proofs of the correspondence between the operation and denotational semantics are provided.
	www.amazon.com /Formal-Semantics-Programming-Languages-Winskel/dp/0262731037 (902 words)

	Reusability of formal specifications in programming language description
		The advantages of formal methods for programming language description are well known such as: they describe syntax and semantics in a precise and unambiguous manner, they offer the possibility of automatically generated compilers or interpreters and serve as a tool for programming language development and design.
		An interesting approach to modularity and reusability of denotational semantics is described in [5] where various semantic domains are encapsulated properly in the semantic algebra.
		On the other hand, action semantics [9] is invented as a direct response to the disadvantages of pragmatic aspects of denotational semantics such as lack of modularity, extensibility and reusability.
	www.umcs.maine.edu /~ftp/wisr/wisr8/papers/mernik/mernik.html (1495 words)

	Formal Semantics - Book Information
		Type-Shifting Rules and the Semantics of Interrogatives: Jeroen Groenendijk and Martin Stokhof.
		He is the author of numerous articles on topics such as mood and modality, tense and aspect, and the syntax/semantics interface.
		is Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is the author of several landmark essays in formal semantics.
	www.blackwellpublishing.com /book.asp?ref=0631215425 (351 words)

	Cover Pages: W3C Working Draft for XQuery 1.0 Formal Semantics.
		The new document defines the formal semantics for XQuery 1.0, and a future version of the document will also define the formal semantics for XPath 2.0.
		This document defines the semantics of XQuery by giving a precise formal meaning to each of the constructions of the XQuery specification in terms of the XQuery data model.
		formally specifies the data model used by XQuery to represent the content of XML documents.
	xml.coverpages.org /ni2002-03-26-b.html (425 words)

	CS152 Homework: Formal Semantics (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		This assignment focuses on formal semantics and its application to the construction of interpreters and compilers.
		Modify the "Locations and Environments" semantics on page 19 of the printed version of the lecture notes so that variables are automatically initialized to zero at the time they are declared.
		One of the advantages of continuation semantics is the ease with which we can work with different kinds of answers.
	www.eecs.harvard.edu /~nr/cs152/homework/sem.html (1437 words)

	Re: Executable UML & OCL formal semantics (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		BTW, the ODM submission does not have formal semantics, it points off to W3C and ISO for that.
		It's unclear how the AB can realistically ask for alignment in formal semantics when: - Most adoptions do not have it, nonnormative or otherwise.
		The fact is that "formal semantics" is not a simple concept in the
	www.omg.org /archives/adtf/msg03240.html (453 words)

	Formal semantics for working programmers \| Lambda the Ultimate
		My sense is that Coq and Isabelle are too heavyweight for defining and reasoning with a formal semantics for a DSL, but I might, of course, be mistaken about this.
		This is the approach taken in Graydon Hoare's wonderful One-Day Compilers presentation, which essentially uses camlp4 (the O'Caml Pre-Processor and Pretty-Printer) and, of course, O'Caml, to do a source-to-source transformation from the DSL to C, and then compiles the C to generate the resulting program.
		By the time someone knows how to formalize a domain, or a language, in an interactive theorem prover my guess is that the burden of actually doing so becomes too big in a setting where money is to be made with a DSL.
	lambda-the-ultimate.org /node/view/918 (782 words)

	CSC-302 99S : Class 11: Introduction to Formal Semantics
		Currently, the trend is to define a formal semantics for the language based on rules of logic.
		Translational semantics: meaning is based on a formal translation of the language to another language.
		Operational semantics: meaning is given by specifying the effects of any program on any input.
	www.math.grin.edu /~rebelsky/Courses/CS302/99S/Outlines/outline.11.html (767 words)

	Adding formal semantics to the Web (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
		However, formal semantics for the primitives defined in RDF Schema are not provided, and the expressivity of these primitives is not enough for full-fledged ontological modeling and reasoning.
		At the lowest level of the Semantic Web (see figure 1) a generic mechanism for expressing machine readable semantics of data is required.
		While none of the semantics of the original OIL expression is lost, its original modeling is. The difference between a comma seperated list within the subclass-of statement or an explicit conjunction is unretrievable.
	www.ontoknowledge.org /oil/papers/extending-rdfs.html (5175 words)

	Formal Semantics of Programs
		traditional approaches to language semantics for programming were informal, with disastrous results (e.g., inconsistent behavior of compilers)
		Dana Scott established lambda calculus as an appropriate mathematical meta-language by giving it a semantics in terms of lattices and continuous functions (especially to model recursion, self-reference)
		other approaches to formal semantics have also been explored (operational, algebraic, abstract machines, etc.); they vary in levels of abstraction (e.g., how overtly they specify computational steps) (interestingly, they are often not viewed as competitive alternatives, but as opportunities for perspective, via coherence results)
	www.willamette.edu /~fruehr/talks/ling/clltalk6.html (148 words)

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