1. A method of modifying synthesized speech of a spoken dialogue system, the method comprising: receiving a user utterance; analyzing via a processor the user utterance using a natural language understanding model to determine an appropriate speech act for responding to the user utterance; selecting at least one phoneme from a catalogue of a plurality of phonemes to yield a selected at least one phoneme, wherein the catalogue organizes phonemes based on speech acts, wherein the speech acts used to organize the catalog of a plurality of phonemes are selected from the group of speech acts consisting of: detail information, general information, “wh” questions, yes/no questions, multiple choice questions, greetings, goodbyes, apologies, thanks, requests, directives, repeat, wait, confirmations, disconfirmations, positive exclamations, filled pause, and negative exclamations; and generating a response to the user utterance of a type associated with the appropriate speech act and using the selected at least one phoneme, wherein linguistic variables in the response are selected based on the appropriate speech act.
1. A method of modifying synthesized speech of a spoken dialogue system, the method comprising: receiving a user utterance; analyzing via a processor the user utterance using a natural language understanding model to determine an appropriate speech act for responding to the user utterance; selecting at least one phoneme from a catalogue of a plurality of phonemes to yield a selected at least one phoneme, wherein the catalogue organizes phonemes based on speech acts, wherein the speech acts used to organize the catalog of a plurality of phonemes are selected from the group of speech acts consisting of: detail information, general information, “wh” questions, yes/no questions, multiple choice questions, greetings, goodbyes, apologies, thanks, requests, directives, repeat, wait, confirmations, disconfirmations, positive exclamations, filled pause, and negative exclamations; and generating a response to the user utterance of a type associated with the appropriate speech act and using the selected at least one phoneme, wherein linguistic variables in the response are selected based on the appropriate speech act. 3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the generated response is generated using text-to-speech technology.