2099978 9214237 PCTABS00014 A linguistic model of words uses a state transition diagram (10). The diagram connects states (12, 14, 16, 18, 20) with arcs (22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32) that represent phoneme transitions within a word. Different pronunciations of the same word may be modelled using alternate transitions (26 or 28 and 30 or 32) from single states (16 and 18, respectively). This effectively models alternate pronunciations using similar phonemes such as substituting a ''D'' (28) phoneme for the ''T'' (26) phoneme in the word ''WATER'' (10). Such models could be extended for longer words or linked together for multiple words.
METHOD FOR RECOGNIZING SPEECH USING LINGUISTICALLY-MOTIVATED HIDDEN MARKOV MODELS