17. A tangible computer-readable medium that stores a program for controlling a computer device to perform a speech processing method, the method comprising: at an automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine: converting a word lattice that describes multiple hypotheses of a received input utterance into a modified word lattice wherein transitions without any input in the word lattice are represented as epsilon transitions in the modified word lattice, and at a spoken language understanding (SLU) engine: receiving the modified word lattice from the ASR engine; and performing an SLU determination via the SLU engine.
18. The tangible computer-readable medium of claim 17 , wherein said performing comprises: calculating an intersection of the modified word lattice and a finite state machine including a plurality of salient grammar fragments; and determining a classification type for the input utterance based on the calculated intersection.