Patent ID: 8108215

Claim:
A speech recognition apparatus, comprising: a speech input unit configured to capture a speech utterance; and a control device configured to receive and store the speech utterance from the speech input unit comprising: a recognition unit configured to compare the speech utterance against keywords which are stored in the control device and determine a recognition result and configured to recognize a plurality of keywords contained in a speech utterance as a keyword group, and based on the first recognition result, further configured to re-recognize a keyword contained in the speech utterance using a phrase containing the keyword and determine a re-recognition result; and an interpretation-results generator configured to determine whether a paraphrase could have been uttered based on the recognition result and the re-recognition result obtained by the recognition unit and configured to specify a phrase corresponding to the paraphrase based on the keyword recognized by the recognition unit when the interpretation-results generator determines that the paraphrase could have been uttered, the interpretation-results generator further configured to specify a phrase associated with the keyword group as a phrase corresponding to the paraphrase, to remove at least one keyword from the keyword group and to specify a phrase associated with the keyword group from which the at least one keyword is removed as the phrase corresponding to the paraphrase when the interpretation-results generator does not successfully extract the phrase associated with the keyword group as originally constituted.