1. A computer-implemented method being performed at a computing device, the method comprising: receiving a spoken utterance at the computing device; converting the spoken utterance to a text phrase; identifying a top level predicate of the text phrase, wherein the top level predicate comprises a word of the text phrase upon which other words of the text phrase depend and which does not depend on other words of the text phrase, wherein the top level predicate is associated with an intent of the text phrase; reformatting the text phrase, wherein the reformatted text phrase comprises at least the word corresponding to the top level predicate; defining an intent domain based on the reformatted text phrase; filling one or more semantic slots of a spoken language understanding application associated with the intent domain with words from the text phrase; and performing a task associated with the intent domain and based on information from the filled semantic slots of the spoken language understanding application at the computing device.