Prescriptive Semantics for Big-Step Modelling Languages

A big-step modelling language (BSML) is a language in which a model can respond to an environmental input via a sequence of small steps, each of which may consist of the concurrent execution of a set of transitions. BSMLs are a popular class of modelling languages that are regularly reincarnated in different syntactic and semantic variations. In our previous work, we deconstructed the semantics of many existing BSMLs into eight high-level, conceptually intuitive semantic aspects and their semantic options, which together constitute a semantic design space for BSMLs. In this work, we describe a parametric semantic definition schema based on this deconstruction for defining formally the semantics of a wide range of BSMLs. A semantic definition in our framework is prescriptive in that the high-level semantic aspects of a BSML are manifested clearly as orthogonal parts of the semantic definition. Our goal is to produce a formal semantic definition that is accessible to various stakeholders of the semantics.