A structure is locally finite if every finitely generated substructure is finite; local sentences are universal sentences all models of which are locally finite. The stretching theorem for local sentences expresses a remarkable reflection phenomenon between the finite and the infinite models of local sentences. This result in part requires strong axioms to be proved; it was studied by the second named author, in a paper of this Journal, volume 53. Here we correct and extend this paper; in particular we show that the stretching theorem implies the existence of inaccessible cardinals, and has precisely the consistency strength of Mahlo cardinals of finite order. And we present a sequel due to the first named author:

(i) decidability of the spectrum Sp(φ) of a local sentence φ, below ωω; where Sp(φ) is the set of ordinals α such that φ has a model of order type α

(ii) proof that bethω = sup{Sp(φ): φ local sentence with a bounded spectrum}

(iii) existence of a local sentence φ such that Sp(φ) contains all infinite ordinals except the inaccessible cardinals.

The existence of a countable complete theory with exactly ℵ1 many minimal models is independent of ZFC + ¬CH.

We characterize the generalized quantifiers Q which satisfy the scheme QxQyф ↔ QyQxф, the so-called self-commuting quantifiers, or quantifiers with the Fubini property.

The study of infinitary Boolean operations was undertaken by the early researchers of descriptive set theory soon after Suslin's discovery of the important operation. The first attempt to lay down their theory in a systematic fashion was the work of Kantorovich and Livenson [5], where they call these the analytical operations. Earlier, Hausdorff had introduced the δs operations — essentially same as the monotoneω-ary Boolean operations, and Kolmogorov, independently of Hausdorff, had discovered the same objects, which were used in his study of the R operator.

The ω-ary Boolean operations turned out to be closely related to most of the classical hierarchies over a fixed Polish space X, including, e. g., the Borel hierarchy (), the difference hierarchies of Hausdorff (Dη()), the C-hierarchy (Cξ) of Selivanovski, and the projective hierarchy (): for each of these hierarchies, every level can be expressed as the range of an ω-ary Boolean operation applied to all possible sequences of open subsets of X. In the terminology of Dougherty [3], every level is “open-ω-Boolean” (if and are collections of subsets of X and I is any set, is said to be -I-Boolean if there exists an I-ary Boolean operation Φ such that = Φ, i. e. is the range of Φ restricted to all possible I-sequences of sets from ). If in addition, the space X has a basis consisting of clopen sets, then the levels of the above hierarchies are also “clopen-ω-Boolean.”

We prove that a necessary and sufficient condition for a countable set of sets of integers to be equal to the algebra of all sets of integers definable in a nonstandard elementary extension of ω by a formula of the PA language which may include the standardness predicate but does not contain nonstandard parameters, is as follows: is closed under arithmetical definability and contains 0(ω) the set of all (Gödel numbers of) true arithmetical sentences.

Some results related to definability of sets of integers in elementary extensions of ω are included.

We prove various results on the notion of ordinal ultrafiters introduced by J. Baumgartner. In particular, we show that this notion of ultrafilter complexity is independent of the more familiar Rudin-Keisler ordering.

Using Steel's recent result that assuming AD, in L[ℝ] below Θ, κ is regular iff κ is measurable, we mimic below Θ certain earlier results of Gitik. In particular, we construct via forcing a model in which all uncountable cardinals below Θ are singular and a model in which the only regular uncountable cardinal below Θ is ℵ1.

If T has only countably many complete types, yet has a type of infinite multiplicity then there is a c.c.c. forcing notion such that, in any -generic extension of the universe, there are non-isomorphic models M1 and M2 of T that can be forced isomorphic by a c.c.c. forcing. We give examples showing that the hypothesis on the number of complete types is necessary and what happens if ‘c.c.c’ is replaced by other cardinal-preserving adjectives. We also give an example showing that membership in a pseudo-elementary class can be altered by very simple cardinal-preserving forcings.

In [1], we established Gentzenizations for a good range of relevant logics with distribution, but, in the process, we added inversion rules, which involved extra structural connectives, and also added the sentential constant t. Instead of eliminating them, we used conservative extension results to relate them back to the original logics. In [4], we eliminated the inversion rules and t and established a much simpler Gentzenization for the weak sentential relevant logic DW, and also for its quantificational extension DWQ, but a restriction to normal formulae (defined below) was required to enable these results to be proved. This method was quite general and hope was expressed about extending it to other relevant logics.

In this paper, we develop an innovative method, which makes essential use of this restriction to normality, to establish two simple Gentzenizations for the normal formulae of the slightly weaker logic B, and then extend the method to other sentential contraction-less logics. To obtain the first of these Gentzenizations, for the logics B and DW, we remove the two branching rules (F&) and (T∨), together with the structural connective ‘,’, to simplify the elimination of the inversion rules and t. We then eliminate the rules (T&) and (F∨), thus reducing the Gentzen system to one containing only ˜ and → and their four associated rules, and reduce the remaining types of structures to four simple finite types. Subsequently, we re-introduce (T&) and (F∨), and also (F&) and (T∨), to obtain the second Gentzenization, which contains ‘,’ but no structural rules.

We introduce the concepts of Morley rank and Morley degree for structures based on Banach spaces. We characterize ω-stability in terms of Morley rank, and prove the existence of prime models for ω-stable theories.

We characterize omissibility of a type, or a family of types, in a countable theory in terms of non-existence of a certain tree of formulas. We extend results of L. Newelski on omitting < covK non-isolated types. As a consequence we prove that omissibility of a family of < covK types is equivalent to omissibility of each countable subfamily.

In the predicate calculus, variables provide a flexible indexing service which selects the actual arguments to a predicate letter from among possible arguments that precede the predicate letter (in the parse of the formula). In the process of selection, the possible arguments can be permuted, repeated (used more than once), and skipped. If this service is withheld, so that arguments must be the immediately preceding ones, taken in the order in which they occur, the formula is said to be fluted. Quine showed that if a fluted formula contains only homogeneous conjunction (conjoins only subformulas of equal arity), then the satisfiability of the formula is decidable. It remained an open question whether the satisfiability of a fluted formula without this restriction is decidable. This paper answers that question.

We prove that there exists a noncappable enumeration degree strictly below 0e′.

In this paper, we solve the strong uniqueness problem posed in [St2]. That is, we extend the full fine structure theory of [MiSt] to backgrounded models all of whose levels are tame (defined in [St2] and below). As a consequence, more powerful large cardinal properties reflect to fine structural inner models. For example, we get the following extension to [MiSt, Theorem 11.3] and [St2, Theorem 0.3].

Suppose that there is a strong cardinal that is a limit of Woodin cardinals. Then there is a good extender sequence such that

(1) every level of is a sound, tame mouse, and

(2) ⊨ “There is a strong cardinal that is a limit of Woodin cardinals”.

Recall that satisfies GCH if all its levels are sound. Another consequence of our work is the following covering property, an extension to [St1, Theorem 1.4] and [St3, Theorem 1.10].

Suppose that fi is a normal measure on Ω and that all premice are tame. Then Kc, the background certified core model, exists and is a premouse of height Ω. Moreover, for μ-almost every α < Ω.

Ideas similar to those introduced here allow us to extend the fine structure theory of [Sch] to the level of tame mice. The details of this extension shall appear elsewhere. From the extension of [Sch] and Theorem 0.2, new relative consistency results follow. For example, we have the following application.

If there is a cardinal κ such that κ is κ+-strongly compact, then there is a premouse that is not tame.

Let denote the ideal of Lebesgue measure zero subsets of the real line. Then add() denotes the minimal cardinality of a subset of whose union is not an element of . In [1] Bartoszynski gave an elegant combinatorial characterization of add(), namely: add() is the least cardinal number κ for which the following assertion fails:

For every family of at mostκ functions from ω to ω there is a function F from ω to the finite subsets of ω such that:

1. For each m, F(m) has at most m + 1 elements, and

2. for each f inthere are only finitely many m such that f(m) is not an element of F(m).

The symbol A(κ) will denote the assertion above about κ. In the course of his proof, Bartoszynski also shows that the cardinality restriction in 1 is not sharp. Indeed, let (Rm: m < ω) be any sequence of integers such that for each m Rm, ≤ Rm+1, and such that limm→∞Rm = ∞. Then the truth of the assertion A(κ) is preserved if in 1 we say instead that

1′. For each m, F(m) has at most Rm elements.

We shall use this observation later on. We now define three more statements, denoted B(κ), C(κ) and D(κ), about cardinal number κ.

We characterize the collapse of Buss' bounded arithmetic in terms of the provable collapse of the polynomial time hierarchy. We include also some general model-theoretical investigations on fragments of bounded arithmetic.

Pillay studied nonmultidimensional superstable theories in [8], among other things defining a certain hierarchy of regular types in terms of which all other types may be analysed. Using this hierarchy, he showed that after naming a suitable ‘base’ of parameters, there are j-constructible (hence locally atomic) models over arbitrary sets (see Section 2 for definitions). It is asked at the end of [8] whether the parameter set can be removed. On a different note, it has been known for some time that in nonmultidimensional superstable theories, R∞-rank is definable for formulas having finite rank (see for example [9]). Definability of R∞-rank has had various applications in the literature, and so it is natural to ask whether the restriction to finite rank is necessary. In this paper we do not quite answer this question, but instead use Pillay's analysis to establish the existence of a ‘new’ continuous rank (the original idea for which is due to Tanović) which is defined on all complete types, reflects forking as does R∞-rank and satisfies certain definability properties.

Motivated by problems that arise in computing degrees of belief, we consider the problem of computing asymptotic conditional probabilities for first-order sentences. Given first-order sentences φ and θ, we consider the structures with domain {1, …, N} that satisfy θ, and compute the fraction of them in which φ is true. We then consider what happens to this fraction as N gets large. This extends the work on 0-1 laws that considers the limiting probability of first-order sentences, by considering asymptotic conditional probabilities. As shown by Liogon'kiĭ [24], if there is a non-unary predicate symbol in the vocabulary, asymptotic conditional probabilities do not always exist. We extend this result to show that asymptotic conditional probabilities do not always exist for any reasonable notion of limit. Liogon'kiĭ also showed that the problem of deciding whether the limit exists is undecidable. We analyze the complexity of three problems with respect to this limit: deciding whether it is well-defined, whether it exists, and whether it lies in some nontrivial interval. Matching upper and lower bounds are given for all three problems, showing them to be highly undecidable.

We address the classification of the possible finitely-additive probability measures on the Boolean algebra of definable subsets of M which are invariant under the natural action of Aut(M). This pursuit requires a generalization of Shelah's forking formulas [8] to “essentially measure zero” sets and an application of Myer's “rank diagram” [5] of the Boolean algebra under consideration. The classification is completed for a large class of ℵ0-categorical structures without the independence property including those which are stable.

We show that the Π20 enumeration degrees are not dense. This answers a question posed by Cooper.