9. A spoken dialogue system comprising: a processor; a first module configured to cause the processor receive a user utterance; a second module configured to cause the processor analyze the user utterance using a natural language understanding model to determine an appropriate speech act for responding to the user utterance; a third module configured to select 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 a fourth module configured to cause the processor generate 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.
9. A spoken dialogue system comprising: a processor; a first module configured to cause the processor receive a user utterance; a second module configured to cause the processor analyze the user utterance using a natural language understanding model to determine an appropriate speech act for responding to the user utterance; a third module configured to select 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 a fourth module configured to cause the processor generate 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. 11. The system of claim 9 , wherein the fourth module is configured to cause the processor to generate the response using text-to-speech technology.