Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2014
Let W0, W1 … be one of the usual enumerations of recursively enumerable (r.e.) subsets of the set N of nonnegative integers. (Background information will be given later.) Suggestions of Anil Nerode led to the following
Definitions. Let B be a subset of N and let ψ be a partial recursive function.
Major portions of this paper appeared as part of the author's doctoral dissertation at Cornell University. Theorem 3 and related comments were added later. The author wishes to thank Anil Nerode, his advisor, for his encouragement and guidance, and George Metakides for his willingness to listen to the arguments in this paper in detail and for providing a language which makes the initial definitions more palatable. As a graduate student the author benefited from numerous conversations with Professor Robert I. Soare (University of Illinois at Chicago Circle) concerning the intricacies of priority arguments, although these conversations did not touch on the specific concepts in this paper. This research was done while the author held an NSF Graduate Fellowship.