I know, but syntactically speaking, when looking at a program, it is always just lists embedded in lists. That is the lack of semantic references I am thinking

I know, but syntactically speaking, when looking at a program, it is always just lists embedded in lists. That is the lack of semantic references I am thinking about. When I talk about being feeling grounded, I mean seeing a distinguishable syntactic structure that gives me a (semantic) reference point for what I am looking at.