formal-semantics

What is "formal semantics"?

I'm reading a very silly paper and it keeps on talking about how Giotto defines a "formal semantics". Giotto has a formal semantics that specifies the meaning of mode switches, of intertask communication, and of communication with the program environment. I'm on the edge of, but just cannot quite grasp what it means by "formal sema...

is there a Universal Model for languages?

Many programming languages share generic and even fairly universal features. For example, if you compared Java, VB6, .NET, PHP, Python, then you would find common functions such as control structures, numeric and string manipulation, etc. What has been done to define these features at a meta-language (or language-agnostic) level? UM...