Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2017
We introduce the concept of a locally finite abstract elementary class and develop the theory of disjoint$\left( { \le \lambda ,k} \right)$-amalgamation) for such classes. From this we find a family of complete ${L_{{\omega _1},\omega }}$ sentences ${\phi _r}$ that a) homogeneously characterizes ${\aleph _r}$ (improving results of Hjorth [11] and Laskowski–Shelah [13] and answering a question of [21]), while b) the ${\phi _r}$ provide the first examples of a class of models of a complete sentence in ${L_{{\omega _1},\omega }}$ where the spectrum of cardinals in which amalgamation holds is other that none or all.