Skip to main content

Defining a language in its own terms

  • Selected Papers
  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Programming Languages and Their Definition

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 177))

  • 149 Accesses

Abstract

The technique of expressing the semantics of a mechanical language in terms of the language itself is considered; an attempt is made to give a description that is independent of the specific language to which the technique is applied. The main investigation is restricted to expression languages, i.e. languages whose meaningful terms are expressions denoting constants. Lisp is used as an example, and some remarks how to extend the technique to programming languages are added.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. McCARTHY, John: Lisp 1.5 Programmers Manual — Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1962).

    Google Scholar 

  2. McCARTHY, John: Towards a Mathematical Science of Computation — In: C. M. Popplewell (editor), Proceedings of IFIP Congress 1962 — North Holland Publishing Company, Amsterdam (1963).

    Google Scholar 

  3. MARKOV, A.A.: The Theory of Algorithms — Am. Math. Soc. Transl. Ser. 2, vol. 15 (1960).

    Google Scholar 

  4. TURING, A.M.: On computable numbers with an application to the Entscheidungs problem — Proc. London Math. Soc., vol.42 (1936); vol.43 (1937).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

C. B. Jones

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1984 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Bekić, H. (1984). Defining a language in its own terms. In: Jones, C.B. (eds) Programming Languages and Their Definition. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 177. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0048937

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0048937

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-13378-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-38933-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics