From Description to Hybrid Logics, and Back

Building on work by Schild, De Giacomo and Lenzerini, we establish a tight connection between description logics and hybrid logics. The main aim of the paper is to provide a modal perspective on some of the distinguishing features of description logic. In particular, by working in a hybrid logic setting we are able to develop a model-theoretic understanding of both assertional and terminological information. We also show how to use the connection between description and hybrid logics to transfer results on complexity and expressive power from one to the other.