22. A speech analyzer according to claim 21 wherein said dynamic time warping means further comprises: means operative at each successive level responsive to said reference word time registration speech pattern endframe and correspondence signal for selecting for each speech pattern endframe signal the time registration path having the minimum correspondence signal to said enframe; and means for storing, for each speech pattern endframe signal, a signal identifying the reference word for said minimum correspondence signal time registration path, the minimum correspondence signal, and a signal representative of the starting frame of the minimum correspondence time registration path.
21. A speech analyzer for recognizing a speech pattern as a string of predetermined reference words comprising: means for storing a set of signals representative of the time frame sequence of acoustic features of each reference word from a beginning frame to an ending frame, means for producing a set of signals representative of the time frame sequence of acoustic features of the speech pattern from a beginning frame to a final frame; means responsive to the feature signals of said reference words and said speech pattern for generating at least one reference word string; and means for identifying the speech pattern as one of said generated reference word strings, said reference word string generating means comprising: means for generating a set of signals to identify successive levels of said reference words; means for assigning a segment of said speech pattern to each successive level, means operative at each successive level responsive to the reference word and speech pattern segment feature signals for dynamically time warping feature signals of each reference word with the feature signals of the speech pattern segment assigned to the level to produce signals representative of time registration path speech pattern endframes for said reference words and signals representative of the correspondence of the reference word and speech pattern segment feature signals on said time registration path; and means responsive to the time registration path speech pattern endframe and correspondence signals of the levels for selecting strings of reference words.