Description Logic

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Overview

Description logic studies formal languages for describing concepts, relationships, and individual objects in ontologies, with precise rules for what follows from a knowledge base. Its reasoning methods support tasks such as consistency checking, query answering, explanation, and repairing conflicting knowledge, which are important for reliable access to structured data. A major approach is to use lightweight families such as EL and DL-Lite, often with query rewriting or specialized algorithms; other work adds defeasible rules, privacy policies, and learning methods that combine symbolic reasoning with embeddings or neural models. A central tension is how to make these languages expressive enough for practical applications while keeping reasoning tractable and ensuring learned representations remain faithful to logical entailments.

Latest papers

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17 papers0 papers in the last four weeks, with none the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. A hierarchy of faithfulness criteria for knowledge base completion

    Aug 20, 2026Olga Mashkova, Robert HoehndorfKG CompletionKG Embedding

    Computer Science Program, Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences & Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955, Saudi Arabia

  2. Syntactic Simplification of OWL Class Expressions

    Aug 19, 2026Alkid Baci, N'Dah Jean Kouagou, Caglar Demir +1Description Logic

    Department of Computer Science Paderborn University Warburger Str. 100, 33098 Paderborn, Germany

  3. Moose: Latent concept learning with reasoning-shortcut awareness in EL++\mathcal{EL}^{++}

    Aug 13, 2026Olga Mashkova, Asaad Mohammedsaleh, Fernando Zhapa-Camacho +1Neurosymbolic LearningDescription Logic

    Computer Science Program, Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences & Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal 23955, Saudi Arabia

  4. A General Sufficient Condition for Rewriting Horn-ALCHI Atomic Queries into GQL

    Aug 5, 2026David Carral, Calixte Gruson, Quentin ManièreQuery ReformulationKnowledge Representation

    LIRMM, Inria, University of Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, France · DI ENS, ENS, CNRS, PSL University & Inria, France

  5. A New Well-Supported Semantics for Description Logic Programs

    Jul 23, 2026Spencer Killen, Jia-Huai YouLogic ProgrammingAnswer Set Programming

    University of Alberta Alberta, Canada

  6. Tractable Query Answering under Epistemic Confidentiality Policies in DL Ontologies (extended version)

    Jul 18, 2026Lorenzo Marconi, Daniela Rieti, Riccardo RosatiDescription Logic

    Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

  7. Tractable Reasoning and Conjunctive Query Answering for Defeasible DL-Lite under Rational Closure

    Jun 23, 2026Giovanni Casini, Umberto StracciaLogical ReasoningDescription Logic

    CNR - ISTI · University of Cape Town · Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell’Informazione, CNR - ISTI, Pisa, Italy +1

  8. A Horn extension of DL-Lite with NL data complexity

    May 13, 2026Janos Arpasi, Bartosz Jan Bednarczyk, Magdalena OrtizLogical ReasoningDescription Logic

    Institute of Logic and Computation, TU Wien · Computer Science Department, University of Wrocław

  9. Rethinking Explanations: Formalizing Contrast in Description Logics

    May 2, 2026Yasir Mahmood, Arnab Sharma, Axel-Cyrille Ngonga Ngomo +1Logical ReasoningExplainable Artificial Intelligence

    Data Science Group, Heinz Nixdorf Institute, Paderborn University Germany

  10. ABox Abduction for Inconsistent Knowledge Bases under Repair Semantics

    May 2, 2026Anselm Haak, Patrick Koopmann, Yasir Mahmood +1Logical ReasoningAbductive Reasoning

    Knowledge Representation Group, Paderborn University, Germany · Knowledge in Artificial Intelligence, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands · Data Science Group, Paderborn University, Germany

  11. Fitting Horn DL Ontologies to ABox and Query Examples: A Tale of Simulation Quantifiers and Finite Models

    Apr 28, 2026Marvin Grosser, Carsten LutzLogical ReasoningDescription Logic

    Leipzig University · ScaDS.AI Center Dresden/Leipzig

  12. BoxLitE: A Faithful Knowledge Base Embedding Based on Convex Optimization

    Apr 27, 2026Bruno F. Lourenço, Hesham Morgan, Ana Ozaki +2Logical ReasoningKG Embedding

    The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan · TU Wien, Austria · University of Oslo, Norway +1

  13. TAPO-Description Logic for Information Behavior: Refined OBoxes, Inference, and Categorical Semantics

    Apr 23, 2026Takao InouéLogical ReasoningDescription Logic

  14. Semantics-Aware Caching for Concept Learning

    Mar 6, 2026Louis Mozart Kamdem Teyou, Caglar Demir, Axel-Cyrille Ngonga NgomoConcept LearningSemantic Caching

    Heinz Nixdorf Institute, Furstenalle 11, 33102 Paderborn, Germany · Paderborn University, Warburgerstr. 100, 33098 Paderborn, Germany

  15. Model Change for Description Logic Concepts

    Mar 5, 2026Ana Ozaki, Jandson S. RibeiroDescription Logic

    University of Oslo, Norway · Cardiff University, UK

  16. TAPO-Structured Description Logic for Information Behavior: Procedural and Oracle-Based Extensions

    Feb 19, 2026Takao InouéDescription Logic

    Faculty of Informatics, Yamato University, Osaka, Japan∗

  17. Querying and Repairing Inconsistent Prioritized Knowledge Bases: Complexity Analysis and Links with Abstract Argumentation

    Mar 12, 2020Meghyn Bienvenu, Camille BourgauxLogical ReasoningComputational Argumentation

    CNRS & University of Bordeaux, France · DI ENS, ENS, CNRS, PSL University & Inria, Paris, France