Remark. [dt-0002]

The choices of semantic domain and valuation function are, essentially, arbitrary: we choose objects that reflect those aspects of our programs that we are interested in. For most of the simple languages we will examine, we are only concerned with the results of the computation, which is a semantics suitable for reasoning about program behaviour and correctness. However, there also exist denotational cost models that compositionally assign a measure of program performance to syntax. This measure is just another kind of denotational semantics.