[SCL] Re: Formal Semantics =/= Semantics

[Jon Awbrey]

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John,

What you are doing here is treating the "language of sets" (LOS)
as a canonical language and prospectively providing translations
from various other languages to LOS.  Futhermore, you are trying
to do this by purely syntactic means, that is, without the boost
of "collateral acquaintaince" with objects, the way your average
human translator might.

Now, if you want to call these syntactic translations by the name
of "formal semantics" or "model theory", well, you are in a large
if not so good company, and so you can probably keep doing that.

But I think that it would be a service to all concerned to clear up
this long-standing confusion once and for all, and to state up front
that formal semantics, done in this vein, has nothing semantic to it,
not in the sense of objective reference, the way most folks understand
the term.

Jon Awbrey

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John F. Sowa wrote:
> 
> Pat,
> 
> Frank's suggestion is good.  That is indeed a common way
> of associating semantics with syntax in compilers and other
> language processors:
> 
> FF> I don't see a one-to-one mapping of "productions" to
>  > semantic descriptions, so my sense is that the semantic
>  > description is incomplete in the current draft.  I'm sure
>  > that a precise description is intended, but I am not seeing
>  > it within the current draft.
> 
> PH> The semantic is gathered into one table, which is the
>  > preferred way to described a model theory. It is particularly
>  > important in this case since the syntax does not suffice
>  > in isolation to provide the semantics precisely.
> 
> The table could be cross referenced to the syntactic production
> rules.  But the relationships won't be exactly one-to-one for
> all CL-conformant languages, since some languages will require
> purely syntactic rearrangements (sometimes called "syntactic
> sugar"), which do not directly affect the semantics.  The
> so-called semantics of those rules would simply move things
> around or add "eye-candy" to the notation.
> 
> And by the way, I am very happy with the following decision:
> 
> PH> The only issue is how to define the scope of a name when
>  > naming a...er...thingie, for subsequent importing. So I suggest
>  > we adopt 'text' for a sequence or set of sentences, and 'module'
>  > for a piece of text with a name and (optionally) a header, and
>  > I will learn to avoid saying 'ontology' in an SCL context.
> 
> John
> 
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