21. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein the processor is further operative to identify a particular one of a plurality of dialogue motivators associated with the given user input, and to utilize the identified dialogue motivator in conjunction with the weights to determine which of a plurality of possible responses the system should generate for a given user input during the dialogue.
13. An apparatus for use in a processing system for managing a dialogue between the system and a user, the apparatus comprising: an input device for processing an input signal representing one of speech and text associated with at least a portion of the dialogue; a memory coupled to the input device for storing a set of frames characterizing a subject of the dialogue, associated with the input signal, each frame including one or more properties that describe a corresponding object which may be referenced during the dialogue, wherein a weight is assigned to each of at least a subset of the properties represented by the set of frames, such that the assigned weights indicate the relative importance of the corresponding properties; a processor coupled to the input device and the memory for processing the set of frames and utilizing the weights to determine which of a plurality of possible responses the system should generate for a given user input during the dialogue; and an output device coupled to the processor and the memory for generating an output signal for sensory perception by the user representing at least one of the plurality of possible responses.