Patent ID: 7249017

Claim:
A speech recognition apparatus for calculating a score indicating a likelihood that one or more speech recognition results of input speech that includes an unknown word is a correct speech recognition result of the unknown word and for performing continuous speech recognition on the input speech based on the score, said speech recognition apparatus comprising: extraction means for extracting features of the input speech; storing means to store a dictionary database having a standard dictionary area and an unknown word dictionary area; calculation means to calculate the score of a word sequence for each candidate for the unknown word in the word sequence by using the extracted features on the basis of the unknown word dictionary area in which unknown-word-forming elements are stored, said elements forming a speech recognition result corresponding to an unknown word, and for classifying said speech recognition result by an attribute thereof; and selection means to select a word sequence of speech recognition results that represent the original input speech based on said score, wherein the unknown word dictionary includes a general purpose branch and an attribute branch connected in sequence, a loop branch is connected to the general purpose branch, wherein unknown words are repeatedly processed through the general purpose branch a predetermined number of times after going through the loop branch.