Abstract: There is disclosed a system and method for automatically performing semantic categorization. In one embodiment at least one text description pertaining to a category set is accepted along with words that are anticipated to be uttered by a user pertaining to that category set; lexical chaining confidence score is attached to each pair matched between the anticipated words and the accepted text description. These confidence scores are used subsequently by a categorization circuit that accepts a text phrase utterance from an input source along with a category set pertaining to the accepted utterance. The categorization circuit, in one embodiment, creates word pairs matched between the accepted text phrase utterance and the accepted category set. From these word scores, the category pertaining to the utterance is determined based, at least in part, on the assigned lexical chaining confidence scores as previously determined.