---
title: "Description Logic TBoxes: Model-Theoretic Characterizations and Rewritability"
authors:
  - "Carsten Lutz"
  - "Robert Piro"
  - "Frank Wolter"
doi: "10.5591/978-1-57735-516-8/IJCAI11-169"
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2011/169"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2011/0169.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2011
pages: "983-987"
track: ""
keywords:
---

# Description Logic TBoxes: Model-Theoretic Characterizations and Rewritability

Carsten Lutz, Robert Piro, Frank Wolter

*Proceedings of the Twenty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 983-987. DOI: [10.5591/978-1-57735-516-8/IJCAI11-169](https://doi.org/10.5591/978-1-57735-516-8/IJCAI11-169)

## Abstract

We characterize the expressive power of description logic (DL) TBoxes, both for expressive DLs such as ALC and ALCQIO and lightweight DLs such as DL-Lite and EL. Our characterizations are relative to first-order logic, based on a wide range of semantic notions such as bisimulation, equisimulation, disjoint union, and direct product. We exemplify the use of the characterizations by a first study of the following novel family of decision problems: given a TBox T formulated in one DL, decide whether T can be equivalently rewritten as a TBox in der fragment L' of L.