22. The method of claim 15 , wherein the spoken dialog service supports chronological shifts in a dialog.
15. A method comprising: selecting a recursive transition network top level dialog flow controller to yield a selected recursive transition network top level flow controller; incorporating a context shift component; selecting available reusable subdialogs for being invoked by the selected recursive transition network top level flow controller to yield selected reusable subdialogs; and testing and deploying a spoken dialog service using the recursive transition network top level flow controller and selected reusable subdialogs, wherein when a user of the spoken dialog service changes a context of a spoken dialog while in a reusable subdialog, to yield a context shift, wherein the context shift causes a parent dialog of a subdialog to be set to a state described by the context shift.