1. A system comprising: a processor; a first module controlling the processor to perform a prosodic analysis and a syntactic analysis of speech data to be spoken by a virtual agent to a user, the prosodic analysis comprising analyzing speech intonations comprising loudness and accent, identifying prosodic phrase boundaries in the speech data, and identifying a type for each of the prosodic phrase boundaries; a second module controlling the processor to determine a culture of the user based on an analysis of prosody associated with received speech from the user, the analysis being independent of an identity of the user; and a third module controlling the processor to control movement of the virtual agent according to the prosodic analysis, the syntactic analysis, and the culture of the user and not based on a previously-stored template for controlling the movement, wherein the movement of the virtual agent at each of the prosodic phrase boundaries is selected based on the type identified for each of the prosodic phrase boundaries.
1. A system comprising: a processor; a first module controlling the processor to perform a prosodic analysis and a syntactic analysis of speech data to be spoken by a virtual agent to a user, the prosodic analysis comprising analyzing speech intonations comprising loudness and accent, identifying prosodic phrase boundaries in the speech data, and identifying a type for each of the prosodic phrase boundaries; a second module controlling the processor to determine a culture of the user based on an analysis of prosody associated with received speech from the user, the analysis being independent of an identity of the user; and a third module controlling the processor to control movement of the virtual agent according to the prosodic analysis, the syntactic analysis, and the culture of the user and not based on a previously-stored template for controlling the movement, wherein the movement of the virtual agent at each of the prosodic phrase boundaries is selected based on the type identified for each of the prosodic phrase boundaries. 5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the system is a client device that communicates over a network with a server.