Patent ID: 7716056

Claim:
A dialog system, comprising: a memory circuit including a knowledge base to store device information regarding a plurality of devices and corresponding domains, and to categorize the information in at least one of a relational and an ontological manner, wherein the respective device information of each one of the plurality of devices is encapsulated in the knowledge base in isolation from all other device information in the knowledge base and from device-independent information in the knowledge base for plug-n-play of the domains; and a processor configured to execute: a speech recognition module to receive speech from a user and convert the speech into a word sequence, and to recognize at least one of full and partial proper names using a statistical model; a natural language understanding module to identify meaning structures from the word sequence using a statistically dependent model of a selected one of the domains and based on the device information in the knowledge base regarding the domain, and to adjust a boundary of the at least one of the full and partial proper names without using the statistical model; a dialogue management module to interpret the meaning structures in a context of the conversation using the device information in the knowledge base regarding the domain, and to construct a content of a response; a device/application manager to interface between the plurality of devices and the dialogue management module; a response generation module to select content and generate the response based on the context and grammatical rules; and a speech synthesis module to synthesize speech wave forms for the response.