A language processing system includes a unified language model. The unified language model comprises a plurality of context-free grammars having non-terminal tokens representing semantic or syntactic concepts and terminals, and an N-gram language model having non-terminal tokens. A language processing module capable of receiving an input signal indicative of language accesses the unified language model to recognize the language. The language processing module generates hypotheses for the received language as a function of words of the unified language model and/or provides an output signal indicative of the language and at least some of the semantic or syntactic concepts contained therein.