1. Apparatus for speech recognition, comprising: (a) spectrum analyzer means for obtaining parameters indicative of the spectrum of an input speech signal, the spectrum analyzer means performing a linear prediction analysis of the input speech signal for obtaining a set of LPC cepstrum coefficients for the input speech signal (b) a standard pattern storing means for storing phoneme standard patterns of phonemes or phoneme groups; (c) a similarity calculating means for calculating the degree of similarity between the LPC cepstrum coefficients derived from said spectrum analyzer means and standard patterns stored in said standard pattern storing means, said calculating means determining a measure of the statistical distance between the LPC cepstrum coefficients and the standard patterns; (d) a segmentation means for segmenting the input speech signal in response to the statistical distance measure derived by said similarity calculating portion and time-dependent power variations in low- and high-frequency ranges of the inout speech signal; and (e) a phoneme discriminating means of recognizing phonemes in response to a signal derived by said similarity calculating means.