2. A method for recognizing a speaker according to claim 1 wherein the template storing step comprises storing a plurality of templates for each reference word, each template being representative of a distinct group of speakers, said first signal generating step comprises generating a set of signals each representative of the correspondence of the identified speaker's utterance of one of said reference words with each distinct group template; said second signal generating step comprises generating a set of signals each representative of the correspondence of the unknown speaker's feature signals for said recognized words with the feature signals of each distinct group template for said recognized words; and said identifying step comprises comparing the distinct group template correspondence signals for the recognized words of the identified speakers with the distinct group template correspondence signals for the unknown speaker to select the identity of the unknown speaker.
3. A method for recognizing a speaker according to claim 2 wherein said distinct group template correspondence signal generation comprises detecting the minimum distinct group template correspondence signal, and forming a normalized correspondence signal for each distinct group correspondence signal responsive to the distinct group correspondence signal and the detected minimum distinct group correspondence signal.