Combining knowledge representation and reasoning formalisms is an important and challenging task. It is important because non-trivial AI applications often comprise different aspects of the world, thus requiring suitable combinations of available formalisms modeling each of these aspects. It is challenging because the computational behavior of the resulting hybrids is often much worse than the behavior of their components. In this paper, we propose a new combination method which is computationally robust in the sense that the combination of decidable formalisms is again decidable, and which, nonetheless, allows non-trivial interactions between the combined components. The new method, called E-connection, is defined in terms of abstract description systems (ADSs), a common generalization of description logics, many logics of time and space, as well as modal and epistemic logics. The basic idea of E-connections is that the interpretation domains of n combined systems are disjoint, and that these domains are connected by means of n-ary ‘link relations. ’ We define several natural variants of E-connections and study in-depth the transfer of decidability from the component systems to their E-connections. Key words: description logics, temporal logics, spatial logics, combining logics, decidability.

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This paper introduces a new logical formalism, intended for temporal conceptual modelling, as a natural combination of the well-known description logic DLR and point-based linear temporal logic with Since and Until. The expressive power of the resulting DLRUS logic is illustrated by providing a characterisation of the most important temporal conceptual modelling constructs appeared in the literature. We define a query language (where queries are non-recursive Datalog programs and atoms are complex DLRUS expressions) and investigate the problem of checking query containment under the constraints defined by DLRUS conceptual schemas---i.e., DLRUS knowledge bases---as well as the problems of schema satisfiability and logical implication.

In this paper we present a common framework for investigating the problem of combining ontology and rule languages. The focus of this paper is in the context of Semantic Web (SW), but the approach can be applied in any Description Logics (DL) based system. In the last part, we will show how rules are strictly related to queries.

We study two-dimensional Cartesian products of modal logics determined by infinite or arbitrarily long finite linear orders and prove a general theorem showing that in many cases these products are undecidable, in particular, such are the squares of standard linear logics like K4:3, S4:3, GL:3, Grz:3, or the logic determined by the Cartesian square of any infinite linear order. This theorem solves a number of open problems of Gabbay and Shehtman [7]. We also prove a sufficient condition for such products to be not recursively enumerable and give a simple axiomatisation for the square K4:3 K4:3 of the minimal liner logic using non-structural Gabbay-type inference rules.

The most widely used attractive logical account of knowledge uses standard epistemic models, i.e., graphs whose edges are indistinguishability relations for agents. In this paper, we discuss more general topological models for a multi-agent epistemic language, whose main uses so far have been in reasoning about space. We show that this more geometrical perspective affords greater powers of distinction in the study of common knowledge, defining new collective agents, and merging information for groups of agents.

We consider an extension of linear-time temporal logic (LTL) with constraints interpreted over a concrete domain. We use a new automata-theoretic technique to show pspace decidability of the logic for the constraint systems (Z, <, =) and (N, <, =). Along the way, we give an automata-theoretic proof of a result of [BC02] when the constraint system D satisfies the completion property. Our decision procedures extend easily to handle extensions of the logic with past operators and constants, as well as an extension of the temporal language itself to monadic second order logic. Finally, we show that the logic...

As a remedy for the bad computational behaviour of first-order temporal logic (FOTL), it has recently been proposed to restrict the application of temporal operators to formulas with at most one free variable thereby obtaining so-called monodic fragments of FOTL. In this paper, we are concerned with constructing tableau algorithms for monodic fragments based on decidable fragments of first-order logic like the two-variable fragment or the guarded fragment. We present a general framework that shows how existing decision procedures for first-order fragments can be used for constructing a tableau algorithm for the corresponding monodic fragment of FOTL.

We survey temporal description logics that are based on standard temporal logics such as LTL and CTL. In particular, we concentrate on the computational complexity of the satisfiability problem and algorithms for deciding it.

It is known that for temporal languages, such as first-order LTL, reasoning about constant (time-independent) relations is almost always undecidable. This applies to temporal description logics as well: constant binary relations together with general concept subsumptions in combinations of LTL and the basic description logic ALC cause undecidability. In this paper, we explore temporal extensions of two recently introduced families of ‘weak’ description logics known as DL-Lite and EL. Our results are twofold: temporalisations of even rather expressive variants of DL-Lite turn out to be decidable, while the temporalisation of EL with general concept subsumptions and constant relations is undecidable.