13. A computer-readable storage device having instructions stored which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising: receiving speech from a user as part of a conversation with an interactive turn-taking spoken dialog system, wherein the speech comprises at least two words; performing a partial speech recognition prior to completion of the speech by: identifying a starting point associated with the speech, the starting point being at a first time; identifying content of the speech received between the first time and a second time, to yield identified content; identifying an intermediary end point associated with the speech corresponding to the second time, wherein the intermediary end point is a pinch node in a content lattice; and returning a partial recognition of the identified content based on the starting point and the intermediary end point to yield partially recognized speech, wherein the partial recognition is based on a stability of the identified content between the starting point and the intermediary end point, the stability being based on a stability probability determined using a machine learning algorithm on a corpus of speech utterances; and presenting the user with a response to the partially recognized speech.
13. A computer-readable storage device having instructions stored which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising: receiving speech from a user as part of a conversation with an interactive turn-taking spoken dialog system, wherein the speech comprises at least two words; performing a partial speech recognition prior to completion of the speech by: identifying a starting point associated with the speech, the starting point being at a first time; identifying content of the speech received between the first time and a second time, to yield identified content; identifying an intermediary end point associated with the speech corresponding to the second time, wherein the intermediary end point is a pinch node in a content lattice; and returning a partial recognition of the identified content based on the starting point and the intermediary end point to yield partially recognized speech, wherein the partial recognition is based on a stability of the identified content between the starting point and the intermediary end point, the stability being based on a stability probability determined using a machine learning algorithm on a corpus of speech utterances; and presenting the user with a response to the partially recognized speech. 14. The computer-readable storage device of claim 13 , wherein the starting point is one of a beginning of the speech and a previously marked pinch node.