Tractable Reasoning in a Universal Description Logic.
Klaus Schild · 1994
Klaus Schild German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3, D-66123 Saarbrucken, FRG e-mail: [email protected] 1 Introduction Description logics (also called terminological logics or concept languages) have been designed for the logical reconstruction and specification of knowledge representation systems descending from Kl-One such as Back, Classic, KRIS, and Loom. 1 These systems are used to make the terminology of an application domain explicit and then to classify these definitions automatically into a taxonomy according to semantic relations like subsumption and equivalence. More precisely, automatic classification refers to the ability to insert a new concept into the taxonomy in such a way that it is directly linked to the most specific concept it is subsumed by and to the most general concept it in turn subsumes. Terminological knowledge representation systems thereby support the task to formalize an application in at least two respects. On the...