A loop expression
for i=0 to 9 {...}
when encountered by an interpreter will cause repeated execution of the loop block and incrementing of the counter. We know that. That, to a human programmer, is the meaning of the loop construct (loosely). The computer, however, can't be said to "know" this except in the narrow sense that programmers use when speaking of software. The computer simply does the right thing. (It is tempting to think of the computer as understanding code because code is expressed in something like the language we use to talk about it - but the computer executing a loop no more understands it than a gearbox understands gear ratios.)
What semantic programming brings to the table is simply that: explicitly associating meaning with program constructs. In this view, the syntactic expression for a loop is the syntactic pole of a symbolic unit whose semantic pole points to the concept of "loop" - or, more precisely, whatever kind of loop it is. And the meaning of that unit involves the more abstract "loop".
This can be applied in either direction. When programming, the system would express the loop in terms of that (or another) symbolic unit. However, the system should be able to parse and understand (let's call it "comprehend" to set it slightly apart from human understanding) existing syntactic structures - we programmers do that all the time, after all. Given code, the system should be able to recreate some of the thinking of the programmer who wrote it.
In natural language, words and phrases in the lexicon work in this same way. We'll construct a syntactic lexicon for each programming language the system will work with, along with specialty project-specific lexicons for natural-language domains (remember - comments are grist for the semantic mill, if the system can manage to comprehend them). (And it should most certainly write comments, when it comes to that.)
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