Some useful preservation theorems

Abstract

The study of preservation theorems for first order logic was the focus of much research by model theorists in the 1960's. These theorems, which came to form the foundation for classical model theory, characterize first order sentences and theories that are preserved under operations such as the taking of unions or submodels (see Chang and Keisler [5] for a discussion of preservation theorems for first order logic). In current model theoretic research, logics richer than first order logic and applications of logic to other parts of mathematics have assumed the central position. In the former area, preservation theorems are not so important; in the latter, especially in applications to algebra, many of the techniques developed for proving these theorems have been useful.In this paper I prove several preservation theorems for first order logic which I discovered while investigating the asymptotic growth of classes of finite combinatorial structures. The significance of these theorems lies in their applications to problems in finite combinatorics. Since the applications require combinatorial and analytical techniques that are not pertinent to logical questions discussed here, I shall present them in another paper [7].