The Herbrandization of a logical formula (named after Jacques Herbrand) is a construction that is dual to the Skolemization of a formula. Thoralf Skolem had considered the Skolemizations of formulas in prenex form as part of his proof of the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem (Skolem 1920). Herbrand worked with this dual notion of Herbrandization, generalized to apply to non-prenex formulas as well, in order to prove Herbrand's theorem (Herbrand 1930).
The resulting formula is not necessarily equivalent to the original one. As with Skolemization which only preserves satisfiability, Herbrandization being Skolemization's dual preserves validity: the resulting formula is valid if and only if the original one is.
Definition and examples
Let
The Herbrandization of
For instance, consider the formula
The Skolemization of a formula is obtained similarly, except that in the second step above, we would delete quantifiers on variables that are either (1) existentially quantified and within an even number of negations, or (2) universally quantified and within an odd number of negations. Thus, considering the same
To understand the significance of these constructions, see Herbrand's theorem or the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem.