Patent ID: 7783484

Claim:
Apparatus for automatically generating a phonetic baseform from a spoken utterance, the apparatus comprising: at least one storage medium; and at least one processor coupled to the at least one storage medium and operative to (i) obtain a stream of acoustic observations representing the spoken utterance; (ii) generate a sequence of subphone units representing candidate subphone units substantially maximizing a likelihood associated with the stream of acoustic observations; and (iii) convert the sequence of subphone units into a phonetic baseform; wherein the generating operation comprises merging candidate subphone units that relate to a same speech event and that overlap in time into a single candidate subphone unit, and associating with the single candidate subphone unit a score equal to a sum of scores associated with the merged candidate subphone units such that a score associated with a longer-lasting speech event is enhanced as compared with a score associated with a shorter-lasting speech event.