Natural Language
Most widely-used languages are specified using natural language descriptions of their semantics. This description usually takes the form of a reference manual for the language. These manuals can run to hundreds of pages, e.g., the print version of The Java Language Specification, 3rd Ed. is 596 pages long.
The imprecision of natural language as a vehicle for describing programming language semantics can lead to problems with interpreting the specification. For example, the semantics of Java threads were specified in English, and it was later discovered that the specification did not provide adequate guidance for implementors.
Read more about this topic: Programming Language Specification, Semantics
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