Method and apparatus for federated understanding

A computer-readable medium providing computer-executable instructions for performing steps to provide and use extensible discourse semantic definitions to resolve a user input into a discourse item, the steps comprising:

• providing a first discourse semantic definition comprising a slot having an entity of a type;
• allowing more than one discourse semantic definition to be provided for entities that are the same type as the slot;
• constructing an initial discourse semantic structure based on the first discourse semantic definition and user input;
• inserting into the initial discourse semantic structure a discourse semantic structure that is constructed based on at least one of the discourse semantic definitions for an entity of the same type as the slot and user input to produce an expanded discourse semantic structure;
• and
• using the expanded discourse semantic structure to resolve the user input.

A method of resolving user input to identify a discourse item, the method comprising:

• associating a first part of the user input with a first application;
• associating a second part of the user input with a second application that is independent of the first application;
• utilizing application-specific programs associated with the first application to generate user interfaces to identify a first entity from the user input;
• utilizing application-specific programs associated with the second application to generate user interfaces to identify a second entity from the user input;
• and
• using the first entity and the second entity to identify the discourse item.