1. An automatic conversational system having a plurality of computer-implemented dialogue components for conducting an automated dialogue process with a human user, the system comprising: a user client for delivering dialogue output prompts to the human user and receiving dialogue input responses from the human user including speech inputs; an automatic speech recognition engine for processing the speech inputs to determine corresponding sequences of representative text words; a natural language understanding (NLU) processing arrangement for processing the dialogue input responses and the text words to determine corresponding semantic interpretations, the NLU processing arrangement including an anaphora processor accessing a plurality of different information sources characterizing dialogue context, linguistic features, and NLU features to identify unresolved anaphora in the text words needing resolution in order to determine a semantic interpretation; and a dialogue manager for managing the dialogue process with the human user based on the semantic interpretations.