The subject disclosure pertains to systems and methods for performing natural language processing in which tokens are mapped to task slots. The system includes a mapper component that generates a lattice representing possible interpretations of the tokens, a decoder component that creates a ranked list of paths traversing the lattice, a scorer component that generates scores used to rank paths and post-processing components that format the paths for use by other software. Each of these components may be independent, such that the component may be modified or replaced without affecting the remaining components. This allows a variety of different mathematical models and algorithms to be tested or deployed without requiring changes to the remainder of the system.