Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
The first main result of the paper is a criterion for a partially commutative group  
 $\mathbb{G}$  to be a domain. It allows us to reduce the study of algebraic sets over  
 $\mathbb{G}$  to the study of irreducible algebraic sets, and reduce the elementary theory of  
 $\mathbb{G}$  (of a coordinate group over  
 $\mathbb{G}$ ) to the elementary theories of the direct factors of  
 $\mathbb{G}$  (to the elementary theory of coordinate groups of irreducible algebraic sets).
Then we establish normal forms for quantifier-free formulas over a non-abelian directly indecomposable partially commutative group  
 $\mathbb{H}$ . Analogously to the case of free groups, we introduce the notion of a generalised equation and prove that the positive theory of  
 $\mathbb{H}$  has quantifier elimination and that arbitrary first-order formulas lift from  
 $\mathbb{H}$  to  
 $\mathbb{H}\,*\,F$ , where  
 $F$  is a free group of finite rank. As a consequence, the positive theory of an arbitrary partially commutative group is decidable.