A method is described that includes processing text and speech from an input utterance using local overrides of default dictionary pronunciations. Applying this method, a word-level grammar used to process the tokens specifies at least one local word phonetic variant that applies within a specific production rule and, within a local context of the specific production rule, the local word phonetic variant overrides one or more default dictionary phonetic versions of the word. This method can be applied to parsing utterances where the pronunciation of some words depends on their syntactic or semantic context.