1. Apparatus for recognizing continuous speech comprising: means (105) for storing signals representative of the acoustic features of a set of reference words; means (103) responsive to an unknown utterance for producing a sequence of signals representative of the acoustic features of the utterance; means (110,120,130,140,160) responsive to the reference word acoustic feature signals and the utterance acoustic feature signals for generating at least one reference word series as a candidate for said utterance; and means (170) responsive to said at least one reference word series candidate and said utterance acoustic feature signals for identifying said utterance as one of said reference word series candidates; characterized in that said reference word series candidate generating means (110,120,130,140,160) comprises; means (401,340) for generating a signal for identifying successive word position intervals; means (307,309,311) operative in each successive word position interval for forming reference word series partial candidates including means (307,309,311,320,345) responsive to each reference word series partial candidate of the preceding word position for determining for each reference word a plurality of utterance segments beginning within a predetermined range of the utterance segment endpoint of said preceding word position reference word series partial candidate and corresponding to the reference word feature signals, said range overlapping the preceding word position partial candidate utterance segment endpoint; means (307,320) responsive to each reference word feature signals and the feature signals of the corresponding determined utterance segments for forming a signal representative of the similarity between said reference word and said utterance segments; means (309,325) responsive to said similarity signals for selecting reference words having a prescribed similarity to their corresponding utterance segments; and means (311) for combining said selected reference words with the reference word series partial candidates of the preceding word position to form at least one reference word series partial candidate for said word position interval.