Deciding embeddability of partial groupoids into semigroups (Q1293382)

It is known that the embeddability problem for the class of finite partial groupoids is unsolvable, i.e. there is no algorithm for deciding whether or not a finite partial groupoid can be embedded into a semigroup. A partial groupoid is called a partial semigroup if it is embeddable into a semigroup. The class of all partial semigroups is a quasivariety (in the sense of models). It is proved (Theorem 1) that the class of all partial semigroups is not first-order finitely axiomatizable. Similar results are proved for other classes of partial groupoids (associative partial groupoids, \(R\)-presemigroups, \(S\)-presemigroups). Finally, the Knuth-Bendix completion procedure is used for deciding embeddability of finite partial groupoids into semigroups.