Apparatus and method for extracting syllabic nuclei

An apparatus enabling automatic determination of a portion that reliably represents a feature of a speech waveform includes: an acoustic/prosodic analysis unit calculating, from data, distribution of an energy of a prescribed frequency range of the speech waveform on a time axis, and for extracting, among various syllables of the speech waveform, a range that is generated stably, based on the distribution and the pitch of the speech waveform; cepstral analysis unit estimating, based on the spectral distribution of the speech waveform on the time axis, a range of the speech waveform of which change is well controlled by a speaker; and a pseudo-syllabic center extracting unit extracting, as a portion of high reliability of the speech waveform, that range which has been estimated to be the stably generated range and of which change is estimated to be well controlled by the speaker.