Fraïssé–Hintikka theorem in institutions

Abstract

We generalize the characterization of elementary equivalence by Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé games to arbitrary institutions whose sentences are finitary. These include many-sorted first-order logic, higher-order logic with types, as well as a number of other logics arising in connection to specification languages. The gain for the classical case is that the characterization is proved directly for all signatures, including infinite ones.