title:  Operational Semantics for Agent Communication Languages

author: Rogier M. van Eijk, Frank S. de Boer,
        Wiebe van der Hoek  and John-Jules Ch. Meyer 

address: Utrecht University, Department of Computer Science
         P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands

telephone: +31 - 30 - 253 1454 

faxnumber: +31 - 30 - 251 3791	 

email:   {rogier, frankb, wiebe, jj}@cs.uu.nl

abstract: 
In this paper, we study the operational semantics of agent communication 
languages. We develop a general multi-agent programming language 
for systems of concurrently opera\-ting agents, where each
agent has a mental state consisting of beliefs and goals, and the
interaction between the agents proceeds via a message-passing communication
mechanism. We will thereby build upon well-understood concepts from the 
object-oriented programming paradigm as object classes, methods
and object creation.
The formal semantics of the 
language is given by means of transition rules that describe its
operational behaviour. Moreover, the operational semantics closely 
follow the syntactic structure of the language, and hence
give rise to an abstract machine to interpret the language.