11. A method of implementing a speech-based interactive query system, including the steps of: (a) storing a plurality of topic query entries, each topic query entry including a query relating to one or more of topics covered by the speech-based interactive query system; and (b) storing a plurality of topic answer entries, each topic answer entry including an answer to one or more of said plurality of topic query entries, such that each topic query entry has at least one associated topic answer entry; and (c) generating recognized speech utterance data associated with a speech-based query concerning one of said topics, such that said recognized speech utterance data is generated by partial recognition processing of said speech-based query by a first signal processing routine executing at a first computing device, and then completing recognition of said speech-based query through processing performed by a second signal processing routine executing at a second computing device; and (d) converting said recognized speech utterance data with a natural language process into recognized speech sentence data, said recognized speech data being used by a search query suitable for identifying a topic query entry corresponding to said speech-based query; and (e) locating at least one topic answer entry best matching said speech-based query; wherein said natural language process includes both semantic decoding and statistical based processing operations performed on said recognized speech utterance data.
13. The method of claim 11 , wherein said semantic decoding includes a term frequency calculation, which term frequency calculation is based on calculating a lexical distance between each word in said recognized speech utterance data with each word of one or more topic query entries.