1. A method for personalizing a user experience with a computerized virtual personal assistant (“VPA”) application, the VPA application enabling user-directed natural language dialog between a user and the VPA application, the method comprising, with a computing system: maintaining a chain of intents, the chain of intents comprising a plurality of temporally-spaced intents, each of the intents representing a structured interpretation of natural language dialog expressed by a user of the VPA application during a conversational natural language dialog session involving the user and the VPA application; recognizing a pattern of intents in the chain of intents; deriving an inference from the pattern of intents, the inference comprising a conclusion about the user or about the dialog session between the user and the VPA application that is not otherwise available to the VPA application; and applying the inference to a subsequent conversational natural language dialog session involving the VPA application and the user.