This paper presents an enhanced ontology formalization, combining previous work in Conceptual Structure Theory and Order-Sorted
Logic. Most existing ontology formalisms place greater importance on concept types, but in this paper we focus on relation
types, which are in essence predicates on concept types. We formalize the notion of ‘predicate of predicates’ as meta-relation
type and introduce the new hierarchy of meta-relation types as part of the ontology definition. The new notion of closure
of a relation or meta-relation type is presented as a means to complete that relation or meta-relation type by transferring
extra arguments and properties from other related types. The end result is an expanded ontology, called the closure of the
original ontology, on which automated inference could be more easily performed. Our proposal could be viewed as a novel and
improved ontology formalization within Conceptual Structure Theory and a contribution to knowledge representation and formal
reasoning (e.g., to build a query-answering system for legal knowledge).
Keywords Ontology formalization - Knowledge representation - Automated reasoning - Conceptual Structure Theory - Order-Sorted Logic - Type theory - Concept type - Relation type - Meta-relation type - Legal reasoning