The Denotational Semantics of Programming Languages
This paper is a tutorial introduction to the
theory of programming language semantics developed 
by D. Scott and C. Strachey.  The application of the theory
to formal language specification is demonstrated 
and other applications are surveyed. The first language
considered, LOOP, is very elementary and its 
definition merely introduces the notation and methodology
of the approach.  Then the semantic concepts
of environments, stores, and continuations are introduced
to model classes of programming language features 
and the underlying mathematical theory of computation
due to Scott is motivated and outlined.  Finally, 
the paper presents a formal definition of the language GEDANKEN.
CACM August, 1976
Tennent, R. D.
