A machine, system and method for user-guided teaching of deictic references and referent objects of deictic references to a conversational system. The machine includes a system bus for communicating data and control signals received from the conversational system to the computer system, a data and control bus for connecting devices and sensors in the machine, a bridge module for connecting the data and control bus to the system bus, respective machine subsystems coupled to the data and control bus, the respective machine subsystems having a respective user interface for receiving a deictic reference from a user, a memory coupled to the system bus for storing deictic references and objects of the deictic references learned by the conversational system and a central processing unit coupled to the system bus for executing the deictic references with respect to the objects of the deictic references learned.