Typed Higher-Order Variant of SROIQ - Why Not?

ABSTRACT. Ontology modelling sometimes calls for higher order entities, i.e., classes of classes, and so on. Such constructs are, however, not supported by most widely used ontology languages, such as OWL 2, which is based on the SROIQ DL. This often results in approximate modelling techniques, such as modelling classes as individuals. Some of the logical and ontological information is thus lost, or at least obscured. In this paper we show a typed higher-order variant of SROIQ. We show that it is decidable, and in fact polynomially reducible into regular SROIQ. In the latter part of the paper we then illustrate modelling scenarios in which such a language is useful.