On lovely pairs of geometric structures

We study the theory of lovely pairs of geometric structures, in particular o-minimal structures. We use the pairs to isolate a class of geometric structures called weakly locally modular which generalizes the class of linear structures in the settings of SU-rank one theories and o-minimal theories. For o-minimal theories, we use the Peterzil-Starchenko trichotomy theorem to characterize for a sufficiently general point, the local geometry around it in terms of the thorn U-rank of its type inside a lovely pair. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V.