this paper, so we leave them out here. Thus we can apply the idea of combining things via colimits to institutions themselves, with the special point that we have to take limits here instead of colimits. Taking limits in CAT results in categories of "amalgamated objects", i. e. we put signatures and models together at the level of single objects. In contrast to this, sentences are combined with colimits in Set (due to the contravariant direction of the sentence component). That is, sets of sentences are combined. To show how this works, we introduce some well-known institutions and morphisms between them.

. The paper addresses important problems of building complex logical systems and their representations in universal logics in a systematic way. We adopt the model-theoretic view of logic as captured in the notions of institution and of parchment (an algebraic way of presenting institutions). We propose a new, modified notion of parchment together with parchment morphisms and representations. In contrast to the original parchment definition and our earlier work, in model-theoretic parchments introduced here the universal semantic structure is distributed over individual signatures and models. We lift formal properties of the categories of institutions and their representations to this level: the category of model-theoretic parchments is complete, and their representations may be put together using categorical limits as well. However, model-theoretic parchments provide a more adequate framework for systematic combination of logical systems than institutions. We indicate how the necessar...

For the specification of abstract data types, quite a number of logical systems have been developed. In this work, we will try to give an overview over this variety. As a prerequisite, we first study notions of {\em representation} and embedding between logical systems, which are formalized as {\em institutions} here. Different kinds of representations will lead to a looser or tighter connection of the institutions, with more or less good possibilities of faithfully embedding the semantics and of re-using proof support. In the second part, we then perform a detailed ``empirical'' study of the relations among various well-known institutions of total, order-sorted and partial algebras and first-order structures (all with Horn style, i.e.\ universally quantified conditional, axioms). We thus obtain a {\em graph} of institutions, with different kinds of edges according to the different kinds of representations between institutions studied in the first part. We also prove some separation results, leading to a {\em hierarchy} of institutions, which in turn naturally leads to five subgraphs of the above graph of institutions. They correspond to five different levels of expressiveness in the hierarchy, which can be characterized by different kinds of conditional generation principles. We introduce a systematic notation for institutions of total, order-sorted and partial algebras and first-order structures. The notation closely follows the combination of features that are present in the respective institution. This raises the question whether these combinations of features can be made mathematically precise in some way. In the third part, we therefore study the combination of institutions with the help of so-called parchments (which are certain algebraic presentations of institutions) and parchment morphisms. The present book is a revised version of the author's thesis, where a number of mathematical problems (pointed out by Andrzej Tarlecki) and a number of misuses of the English language (pointed out by Bernd Krieg-Br\"uckner) have been corrected. Also, the syntax of specifications has been adopted to that of the recently developed Common Algebraic Specification Language {\sc Casl} \cite{CASL/Summary,Mosses97TAPSOFT}.