Forking, normalization and canonical bases (Q1085155)

The paper has two main points. Firstly, it is shown that all the theory of forking can be developed in a possibly unstable theory, but with respect to any Booleanly closed set of stable formulas. A crucial point is the following. Let X be a stable definable set (i.e. X is defined by \(\vartheta(\bar x,\bar a)\) where \(\vartheta(\bar x,\bar y)\) does not have the order property); then we have the following characterization- definition: X does not fork over A if some positive Boolean combination of A-conjugates of X is nonempty and A-definable. Secondly, the notion of a canonical base of a family of types is introduced, and necessary and sufficient conditions are given for suitable families to have canonical bases.