Some characterizations of finitely specifiable implicational dependency families (Q578937)

A theorem analogous to Tarski-Fraisse-Vaught's characterization of universal classes is proved in the following manner: An implicational dependency family over a relation scheme is finitely specifiable if and only if there exists a finite number of relations such that a relation belongs to the dependency family if and only if it has no substructure which is isomorphic to one of the generator relations. Furthermore: A family is finitely specifiable if and only if there exists a natural number k such that a relation belongs to the dependency family whenever the family contains all its substructures of at most k elements. On this basis a new proof for Hull's (1984) characterization is also given.