semantics
,
n. pl.
1. a. (the study or analysis of) the relationships between
linguistic symbols and their meanings.
-- Oxford English Dictionary,
2nd edn
Computational formalisms have both an operational and a
denotational semantics. The
operational semantics
specifies
the meaning of expressions by their transformational properties and
is determined by the derivation rules of a logic or the computation
rules of a
calculus
. The
denotational
semantics
specifies the the meaning of expressions by their
denotation and has a domain of interpretation that defines the
denotation of composite expressions in terms of the denotations of
their components.
...
Typed
formalisms generally have a
more complex linguistic structure but a simpler operational and
denotational
semantics
than their untyped counterparts
because semantics need be given only for expressions that are type
compatible.