1. A method comprising: receiving an input pattern to a dialogue system generated from an acoustic signal that includes a description of a dialogue contribution from a speaker, the dialogue contribution comprising part of an activity oriented dialog concerning activities carried out by the speaker and at least one current device; managing the activities in an activity tree (AT), each of the activities being initiated by a command included in the dialogue contribution from the speaker; defining an activity model (AM) for each device of the at least one device, the activity model comprising scripts encapsulating device-specific information and constituting a declarative specification of device capabilities and their relationships to linguistic information involved in the dialogue contribution; identifying the description and at least one parameter of the description using a dialogue move script (DMS), wherein the DMS corresponds to the at least one device; mapping the description to a dialogue move using the DMS, the dialogue move corresponding to the identified parameter and independent of the device and using the DMS to translate the command into a query to retrieve an object of the command; adding a new dialogue-capable device the dialogue system including associating a device-specific DMS with the new dialogue-capable device that includes mappings to device-specific dialogue moves; receiving a broadcast of an interface from the new dialogue-capable device, wherein the broadcast comprises information including functionality of the new dialogue-capable device, languages recognized by the new dialogue-capable device, and any device-specific DMS required for the new dialogue-capable device, to allow the new dialogue-capable device to self-register with a dialogue manager component of the dialogue system; and defining the new dialogue-capable device to be a current device within an information state of the dialogue system after receipt of the broadcast.