Prime models and almost decidability

Abstract

This paper introduces and investigates a notion that approximates decidability with respect to countable structures. The paper demonstrates that there exists a decidable first order theory with a prime model that is not almost decidable. On the other hand it is proved that if a decidable complete first order theory has only countably many complete types, then it has a prime model that is almost decidable. It is not true that every decidable complete theory with only countably many complete types has a decidable prime model. It is not known whether a complete decidable theory with only countably many countable models up to isomorphism must have a decidable prime model. In [1] a weaker result was proven—if every complete extension, in finitely many additional constant symbols, of a theory T fails to have a decidable prime model, then T has 2ω nonisomorphic countable models. The corresponding statement for saturated models is false, even if all the complete types are recursive, as was shown in [2]. This paper investigates a variation of the open question via a different notion of effectiveness—almost decidable.A tree Tr will be a subset of ω<ω that is closed under predecessor. For elements f, g in ω<ω ∪ ωω, ƒ ⊲ g iffdf ∀i < lh(ƒ)[ƒ(i) = g(i)].