On the logical properties of the nonmonotonic description logic DLN

DLN is a recent nonmonotonic description logic, designed for satisfying independently proposed knowledge engineering requirements, and for removing some recurrent drawbacks of traditional nonmonotonic semantics. In this paper we study the logical properties of DLN and illustrate some of the relationships between the KLM postulates and the characteristic features of DLN, including its novel way of dealing with unresolved conflicts between defeasible axioms. Moreover, we fix a problem affecting the original semantics of DLN and accordingly adapt the reduction from DLN inferences to classical inferences. Along the paper, we use various versions of the KLM postulates to deepen the comparison with related work, and illustrate the different tradeoffs between opposite requirements adopted by each approach.