Bialgebras for structural operational semantics: An introduction

Towards a Mathematical Operational Semantics

We present a categorical theory of ‘well-behaved’ operational semantics which aims at complementing the established theory of domains and denotational semantics to form a coherent whole. It is shown that, if the operational rules of a programming language can be modelled as a natural transformation of a suitable general form, depending on functorial notions of syntax and behaviour, then one get...

Distributive-Law Semantics for Cellular Automata and Agent-Based Models

We present an effort to give formal semantics to the popular but theoretically rather unreflected scientific modelling paradigm of agentor individual-based models. To this end, we give a generic formalization of two-dimensional cellular automata with flexible topology as the abstract basis of such models. The semantic approach of structural operational semantics a la Turi and Plotkin [7], based...

Semantics of programming languages - an elementary introduction using structural operational semantics

Bialgebraic Semantics and Recursion

In [9] a unifying framework was given for operational and denotational semantics. It uses bialgebras, which are combinations of algebras (used for syntax and denotational semantics) and coalgebras (used for operational semantics and solutions to domain equations). Here we report progress on the problem of adapting that framework to include recursion. A number of difficulties were encountered. A...

G-Reactive Systems as Coalgebras

The semantics of process calculi has traditionally been specified by labelled transition systems (LTSs), but with the development of name calculi it turned out that definitions employing reduction semantics are sometimes more natural. Reactive Systems à la Leifer and Milner allow to derive from a reduction semantics definition an LTS equipped with a bisimilarity relation which is a congruence. ...