CS Exam Part 2

Okay, anoth­er ques­tion, as I’m con­fused on this one.

4. From the stand­point of the­o­ret­i­cal com­put­er sci­ence, what is an abstract lan­guage com­posed of?

In class, he men­tioned the “pre­his­to­ry” of pro­gram­ming lan­guages and stat­ed that abstract lan­guages and machines were based on math­e­mat­ic prin­ci­ples and that they pro­vid­ed the basis for phys­i­cal machines.

But then he also talked about a pro­gres­sion of abstrac­tion in lan­guages, from machine lan­guages to high-lev­el lan­guages to object-ori­ent­ed lan­guages, which he referred to as being the most abstract.

So is an abstract lan­guage one based on math­e­mat­ic prin­ci­ples? I’m not sure. It seems that way, but I’m con­fused and there’s not the first word about that in the textbook.