Gemini is a natural language (NL) understanding system developed for spoken language applications. This paper describes the details of the system, and includes relevant measurements of size, efficiency, and performance of each of its components. In designing any NL understanding system, there is a tension between robustness and correctness. Forgiving an error risks throwing away crucial information; furthermore, devices added to a system to enhance robustness can sometimes enrich the ways of finding an analysis, multiplying the number of analyses for a given input, and making it more difficult to find the correct analysis. .
