Programmatic semantics for natural language interfaces

Rather than reduce instructions to keywords, this paper asks what procedural meaning ordinary grammar already carries. It develops four families of mappings: syntactic, procedural, relational and set-theoretic, and representational. Nouns suggest structures, verbs functions, conditions establish control, plural descriptions imply iteration, and comparative phrases select dynamic sets. Metafor demonstrates how later context can refactor a simple representation into a richer one. Evidence comes from prior novice-programming descriptions, three system iterations, and a thirteen-person Pacman brainstorming study in which beginners especially preferred Metafor. The study measured confidence and estimated time, not completed code or mapping accuracy. An examiner helped enter and sometimes rephrase stories, generated code could remain non-executable, and ambiguous conditions still depended on world and program context.