Interpolation and Symbol Elimination

One task of metamathematics is to relate suggestive but nonelementary modeltheoretic concepts to more elementary proof-theoretic concepts, thereby opening up modeltheoretic problems to proof-theoretic methods of attack. Herbrand's Theorem (see [8] or also [9], vol. 2) or Gentzen's Extended Hauptsatz (see [5] or also [10]) was first used along these lines by Beth [1]. Using a modified version he showed that for all first-order systems a certain modeltheoretic notion of definability coincides with a certain proof theoretic notion. In the present paper the Herbrand-Gentzen Theorem will be applied to generalize Beth's results from primitive predicate symbols to arbitrary formulas and terms. This may be interpreted as showing that (apart from some relatively minor exceptions which will be made apparent below) the expressive power of each first-order system is rounded out, or the system is functionally complete , in the following sense: Any functional relationship which obtains between concepts that are expressible in the system is itself expressible and provable in the system. A second application is concerned with the hierarchy of second-order formulas. A certain relationship is shown to hold between first-order formulas and those second-order formulas which are of the form (∃T 1 )…(∃T k )A or (T 1 )…(T k )A with A being a first-order formula. Modeltheoretically this can be regarded as a relationship between the class AC and the class PC ⊿ of sets of models, investigated by Tarski in [12] and [13].