Peter D. Mosses. Formal Semantics of Programming Languages: - An Overview - . Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 148(1):41-73, 2006. [doi]
These notes give an overview of the main frameworks that have been developed for specifying the formal semantics of programming languages. Some of the pragmatic aspects of semantic descriptions are discussed, including modularity, and potential applicability to visual and modelling languages. References to the literature provide starting points for further study.