Abstract

LetKbe an algebraically closed field and letLbe itscanonical language; that is,Lconsists of all relations onKwhich are definable from addition, multiplication, and parameters fromK. Two sublanguagesL1andL2ofLaredefinably equivalentif each relation inL1can be defined by anL2-formula with parameters inK, and vice versa. The equivalence classes of sublanguages ofLform a quotient lattice of the power set ofLabout which very little is known. We will not distinguish between a sublanguage and its equivalence class.LetLmdenote the language of multiplication alone, and letLadenote the language of addition alone. Letf∈K[X, Y] and consider thealgebraic functiondefined byf(x, y) = 0 forx, y∈K. LetLfdenote the language consisting of the relation defined byf. The possibilities forLm∨Lfare examined in §2, and the possibilities forLa∨Lfare examined in §3. In fact the only comprehensive results known are under the additional hypothesis thatfactually defines a rational function (i.e., whenfis linear in one of the variables), and in positive characteristic, only expansions of addition by polynomials (i.e., whenfis linear and monic in one of the variables) are understood. It is hoped that these hypotheses will turn out to be unnecessary, so that reasonable generalizations of the theorems described below to algebraic functions will be true. The conjecture is thatLcoversLmand that the only languages betweenLaandLare expansions ofLaby scalar multiplications.