Definition
A class K of structures of a signature σ is called an elementary class if there is a first-order theory T of signature σ, such that K consists of all models of T, i.e., of all σ-structures that satisfy T. If T can be chosen as a theory consisting of a single first-order sentence, then K is called a basic elementary class.
More generally, K is a pseudo-elementary class if there is a first-order theory T of a signature that extends σ, such that K consists of all σ-structures that are reducts to σ of models of T. In other words, a class K of σ-structures is pseudo-elementary iff there is an elementary class K' such that K consists of precisely the reducts to σ of the structures in K'.
For obvious reasons, elementary classes are also called axiomatizable in first-order logic, and basic elementary classes are called finitely axiomatizable in first-order logic. These definitions extend to other logics in the obvious way, but since the first-order case is by far the most important, axiomatizable implicitly refers to this case when no other logic is specified.
Read more about this topic: Elementary Class
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)