The Tecton concept description language provides constructs for building generic specifications incrementally, based mainly
on the ability to use or refine concepts. This paper focuses on these constructs, the semantic distinctions between them, their role in determining the legality
of concept instances, and their consequent role in motivating a certain style of specification. Differences in the legality
conditions associated with instantiating a used or refined concept strongly motivate the specification writer toward a style
in which concept use rather than refinement is favored.
Keywords Specification techniques and languages - specification evolution and refinement - formal semantics
The first author’s work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Next Generation Software Program, Grant
0131354.
Most of the work of this paper was completed while the second author was visiting Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is
supported in part by NSFC (Grant 69903004), CSC, EYTP, and China MOE Key Research Foundation.