Disentangling Denotational Semantics Definitions

Denotational semantics is a powerful technique to formally define program- ming languages. However, language constructs are not always orthogonal, so many semantic equations in a definition may have to be aware of unrelated constructs seman- tics. Current approaches for modularity in this formalism do not address this problem, providing, for this reason, tangled semantic definitions. This paper proposes an incre- mental approach for denotational semantic specifications, in which each step can either add new features or adapt existing equations, by means of a formal language based on function transformation and aspect weaving.