SPEECH RECOGNITION APPARATUS

The present invention provides a speech recognition apparatus having high speech recognition performance and capable of performing speech recognition in a highly efficient manner. A matching unit 14 calculates the scores of words selected by a preliminary word selector 13 and determines a candidate for a speech recognition result on the basis of the calculated scores. A control unit 11 produces word connection relationships among words included in a word series employed as a candidate for the speech recognition result and stores them into a word connection information storage unit 16. A reevaluation unit 15 corrects the word connection relationships one by one. On the basis of the corrected word connection relationships, the control unit 11 determines the speech recognition result. A word connection managing unit 21 limits times allowed for a boundary between words represented by the word connection relationships to be located thereat. A word connection managing unit 22 limits start times of words preliminarily selected by the preliminary word selector 13. The present invention can be applied to an interactive system that recognizes an input speech and responds to the speech recognition result.