RE: Formal semantics of language semantics

> >Has there been much work on figuring out what the requirements for
> >such a notation? This seems like it would be a relatively
> >active area due to the current industry focus on common language
> >runtimes, but I
> >haven't found any good links in my brief google searches.
>
> Sigh, no :-( I asked precisely your question and spent some time
> tracking down what was available. Here is a summary of what I
> found:


A particularly good introductory book on the subject, IMO, is
Kirkerud's Programming Language Semantics, if you can manage to get
your hands on it. It comes under other titles, as well (Semantics of
Programming Languages). International Thomson ISBN: 1850322732.
Unfortunately, Kirkerud passed away, and the book seems to have gone
by the wayside.


As for well-formedness semantic specifications, the Meta-S Calculus is
turning out to hold its own in that area via predication (as already
mentioned by several others on this list) and named back referencing
via tries. I have just finished a paper on it that I'll be submitting
for peer-reviewed soon. If anyone has a hard-core interest in this
topic, I'm open to forwarding a pre-print as PDF via email upon
request, on the understanding that it doesn't make it into the wild.


Some Theoretical and Practical Results in Context-Sensitive and
Adaptive Parsing
Quinn Tyler Jackson


Abstract


We introduce a fifth language accepting machine called the PDA-T,
demonstrate some of its interesting formal properties, and show its
role in the §-Calculus . Based upon this new machine and the
§-Calculus’ other properties, we demonstrate the §-Calculus’ formal
Turing Power, and then propose a formal language classification (the
§-Hierarchy), derived largely from the Chomsky Hierarchy, but with a
fifth class of language accepted by the PDA-T. We show that this
modified hierarchy yields several conceptual benefits over the
standard four machine Chomsky Hierarchy. We also provide some
practical examples of the use of §-grammars in context-sensitive and
semantic parsing. Keywords: context-sensitive parsing, adaptive
gram-mars, §-Calculus, push down automata, predicated parsing, Chomsky
Hierarchy


--
Quinn Tyler Jackson
http://members.shaw.ca/qjackson/
http://members.shaw.ca/jacksonsolutions/

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