This article presents the speech understanding and dialog system EVAR. All levels of linguistic knowledge are used both to control the analysis process and for the interpretation of an utterance. All kinds of knowledge are integrated in a homogeneous knowledge base. The control algorithm used for the analysis is defined within the representation scheme and does not depend on the application. <p> One of the aims of EVAR is to develop a system structure where linguistic and non-linguistic expectations could be used not only for the interpretation but also as predictions for the recognition process.