1. In a system comprising an ASR component, the said ASR component using grammars to recognize speech in one or more interaction contexts, the said grammars comprising rules corresponding to semantic interpretations, the said rules comprising grammar components, a computer-implemented method for relaxing the said grammars, the said method comprising the steps of: retrieving the original grammar for the applicable interaction context from a computer-readable media; analyzing, by a computing device, the frequencies of occurrence of the grammar components within the original grammar, the step of analyzing, by a computing device, taking into account the semantic interpretations, and the result of the analysis comprising measures of uniqueness of the grammar components across all said semantic interpretations; modifying the original grammar, so that the modified grammar accepts word sequences that could not be accepted by the original grammar; wherein the said step of modifying the original grammar comprises at least one of: making selected components of the original grammar optional, the selection of the said components being based on the results of the said analysis step; changing a likelihood of skipping for the grammar components of the said original grammar, the amount of change for each said grammar component being based on the results of the said analysis step; outputting the modified grammar via computer-writable media for use by the ASR component.