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Abstract

A method of speech analysis calculates one or more difference parameters for each of a sequence of acoustic frames, where each difference parameter is a function of the difference between an acoustic parameter in one frame and an acoustic parameter in a nearby frame. The method is used in speech recognition which compares the difference parameters of each frame against acoustic models representing speech units, where each speech-unit model has a model of the difference parameters associated with the frames of its speech unit. The difference parameters can be slope parameters or energy difference parameters. Slope parameters are derived by finding the difference between the energy of a given spectral parameter of a given frame and the energy, in a nearby frame, of a spectral parameter associated with a different frequency band. The resulting parameter indicates the extent to which the frequency of energy in the part of the spectrum represented by the given parameter is going up or going down. Energy difference parameters are calculated as a function of the difference between a given spectral parameter in one frame and a spectral parameter in a nearby frame representing the same frequency band. In one embodiment of the invention, dynamic programming compares the difference parameters of a sequence of frames to be recognized against a sequence of dynamic programming elements associated with each of a plurality of speech-unit models. In another embodiment of the invention, each speech-unit model represents one phoneme, and the speech-unit models for a plurality of phonemes are compared against individual frames, to associate with each such frame the one or more phonemes whose models compare most closely with it.

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