Patent ID: 7216077

Claim:
A method of providing speaker adaptation in speech recognition, said method comprising the steps of: providing at least one speech recognition model; accepting speaker data; generating a word lattice having a plurality of paths based on the speaker data, wherein the step of generating the word lattice comprises considering language model probabilities by incorporating the language model probabilities into a transition probability; and adapting at least one of the speaker data and the at least one speech recognition model with respect to the generated word lattice in a manner to maximize the likelihood of the speaker data, wherein said step of generating a word lattice comprises generating a maximum a-posteriori probability word lattice, wherein said step of generating a maximum a-posteriori probability word lattice comprises: determining posterior state occupancy probabilities for each state in the speaker data at each time; determining posterior word occupancy probabilities by summing over all states interior to each word in the speaker data; and determining at least one likeliest word at each frame of the speaker data, wherein said step of determining posterior state occupancy probabilities for each state in the speaker data at each time comprises the use of the following formula: P ⁡ ( S t = s | y 1 T ) = α s t ⁢ β s t P ⁡ ( y 1 T ) where α s t =P ( y 1 t , S t =s ) and β s t =P ( y 1+t T /S t =s ) for states s and a set of observations T, and where y t T represents T observation frames of adaptation data.