This paper is concerned with algebraic independence in structures that are relatively simple for their size. It is shown that for κ a limit cardinal, if a structure of power at least κ is ∞ω-equivalent to a structure of power less than κ, then must contain an infinite set of algebraically independent elements. The same method of proof yields the fact that if σ is an Lω1ω-sentence (not necessarily complete) and σ has a model of power ℵω then some model of σ contains an infinite algebraically independent set.

All structures are assumed to be of countable similarity type. Letters , etc. will be used to denote either a structure or the universe of the structure. If X ⊆ , the algebraic closure of X (in ), denoted by Cl(X), is the union of all finite sets that are weakly definable (in ) by Lωω-formulas with parameters from X. A set S is algebraically independent if for each a in S, a ∉ Cl(S – {a}). An algebraically independent set is sometimes called a “free” set (in [3] and [4], for example).

It is known (see [5]) that any structure of power ℵn must have a set of n algebraically independent elements, and there are structures of power ℵn with no independent set of size n + 1. In power ℵω every structure will have arbitrarily large finite algebraically independent sets. However, it is consistent with ZFC that some models of power ℵω do not have any infinite algebraically independent set. Devlin [4] showed that if V = L, then for any cardinal κ, if every structure of power κ has an infinite algebraically independent set, then κ has a certain large cardinal property that ℵω can never possess.