AmbiguityAmbiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement, or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement whose intended meaning cannot be definitively resolved, according to a rule or process with a finite number of steps. (The prefix ambi- reflects the idea of "two," as in "two meanings.") The concept of ambiguity is generally contrasted with vagueness.
Syntactic ambiguitySyntactic ambiguity, also called structural ambiguity, amphiboly or amphibology, is a situation where a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure. Syntactic ambiguity does not come from the range of meanings of single words, but from the relationship between the words and clauses of a sentence, and the sentence structure hidden behind the word order. In other words, a sentence is syntactically ambiguous when a reader or listener can reasonably interpret one sentence as having multiple possible structures.
SemanticsSemantics () is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and computer science. In English, the study of meaning in language has been known by many names that involve the Ancient Greek word σῆμα (sema, "sign, mark, token"). In 1690, a Greek rendering of the term semiotics, the interpretation of signs and symbols, finds an early allusion in John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: The third Branch may be called σημειωτική [simeiotikí, "semiotics"], or the Doctrine of Signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also λογικὴ, Logick.
Type systemIn computer programming, a type system is a logical system comprising a set of rules that assigns a property called a type (for example, integer, floating point, string) to every "term" (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Usually the terms are various constructs of a computer program, such as variables, expressions, functions, or modules. A type system dictates the operations that can be performed on a term. For variables, the type system determines the allowed values of that term.
Operational semanticsOperational semantics is a category of formal programming language semantics in which certain desired properties of a program, such as correctness, safety or security, are verified by constructing proofs from logical statements about its execution and procedures, rather than by attaching mathematical meanings to its terms (denotational semantics).
British EnglishBritish English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English, Welsh English, and Northern Irish English.
Denotational semanticsIn computer science, denotational semantics (initially known as mathematical semantics or Scott–Strachey semantics) is an approach of formalizing the meanings of programming languages by constructing mathematical objects (called denotations) that describe the meanings of expressions from the languages. Other approaches providing formal semantics of programming languages include axiomatic semantics and operational semantics. Broadly speaking, denotational semantics is concerned with finding mathematical objects called domains that represent what programs do.
Data typeIn computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a collection or grouping of data values, usually specified by a set of possible values, a set of allowed operations on these values, and/or a representation of these values as machine types. A data type specification in a program constrains the possible values that an expression, such as a variable or a function call, might take. On literal data, it tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data.
International EnglishInternational English is the concept of using the English language as a global means of communication similar to an international auxiliary language, and often refers to the movement towards an international standard for the language. Related and sometimes synonymous terms include: Global English, World English, Common English, Continental English, General English, and Engas (English as associate language). Sometimes, these terms refer to the actuality of the situation, where English is spoken and used in numerous dialects around the world.
Semantics (computer science)In programming language theory, semantics is the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languages. Semantics assigns computational meaning to valid strings in a programming language syntax. It is closely related to, and often crosses over with, the semantics of mathematical proofs. Semantics describes the processes a computer follows when executing a program in that specific language. This can be shown by describing the relationship between the input and output of a program, or an explanation of how the program will be executed on a certain platform, hence creating a model of computation.
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family. It originated in early medieval England and, today, is the most spoken language in the world and the third most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. English is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers.
Type theoryIn mathematics, logic, and computer science, a type theory is the formal presentation of a specific type system, and in general, type theory is the academic study of type systems. Some type theories serve as alternatives to set theory as a foundation of mathematics. Two influential type theories that were proposed as foundations are Alonzo Church's typed λ-calculus and Per Martin-Löf's intuitionistic type theory. Most computerized proof-writing systems use a type theory for their foundation, a common one is Thierry Coquand's Calculus of Inductive Constructions.
Middle EnglishMiddle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the Oxford English Dictionary specifies the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly followed the High to the Late Middle Ages.
Algebraic data typeIn computer programming, especially functional programming and type theory, an algebraic data type (ADT) is a kind of composite type, i.e., a type formed by combining other types. Two common classes of algebraic types are product types (i.e., tuples and records) and sum types (i.e., tagged or disjoint unions, coproduct types or variant types). The values of a product type typically contain several values, called fields. All values of that type have the same combination of field types.
Hiberno-EnglishHiberno-English (haɪ'bɜːrnoʊ_-,_hɪ-; from Latin Hibernia: "Ireland") or Irish English (IrE), also formerly Anglo-Irish, is the set of English dialects native to the island of Ireland (including both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland). In the Republic of Ireland, English is one of two official languages, along with the Irish language, and is the country's de facto working language. Irish English's writing standards, such as its spelling, align with British English.
Dependent typeIn computer science and logic, a dependent type is a type whose definition depends on a value. It is an overlapping feature of type theory and type systems. In intuitionistic type theory, dependent types are used to encode logic's quantifiers like "for all" and "there exists". In functional programming languages like Agda, ATS, Coq, F*, Epigram, and Idris, dependent types help reduce bugs by enabling the programmer to assign types that further restrain the set of possible implementations.
Primitive data typeIn computer science, primitive data types are a set of basic data types from which all other data types are constructed. Specifically it often refers to the limited set of data representations in use by a particular processor, which all compiled programs must use. Most processors support a similar set of primitive data types, although the specific representations vary. More generally, "primitive data types" may refer to the standard data types built into a programming language (built-in types).
Unified Modeling LanguageThe unified modeling language (UML) is a general-purpose visual modeling language that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system. UML provides a standard notation for many types of diagrams which can be roughly divided into 3 main groups: behavior diagrams, interaction diagrams, and structure diagrams. The creation of UML was originally motivated by the desire to standardize the disparate notational systems and approaches to software design.
Semantics of logicIn logic, the semantics of logic or formal semantics is the study of the semantics, or interpretations, of formal and (idealizations of) natural languages usually trying to capture the pre-theoretic notion of entailment. The truth conditions of various sentences we may encounter in arguments will depend upon their meaning, and so logicians cannot completely avoid the need to provide some treatment of the meaning of these sentences.
Formal semantics (natural language)Formal semantics is the study of grammatical meaning in natural languages using formal tools from logic, mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is an interdisciplinary field, sometimes regarded as a subfield of both linguistics and philosophy of language. It provides accounts of what linguistic expressions mean and how their meanings are composed from the meanings of their parts. The enterprise of formal semantics can be thought of as that of reverse-engineering the semantic components of natural languages' grammars.
