11. A continuous speech recognition system according to claim 1, wherein said asymptotic calculating means is provided with a plurality of similarity measure registers to store similarity measures at predetermined plural time points n, a plurality of path information registers to store path information at said predetermined plural time points n, a comparator to select and output a minimum value from among the values stored in said plurality of similarity measure registers and also to output a signal indicating a time point n corresponding to said selected similarity measure stored in the similarity measure register, an adder to output an added result as a similarity measure obtained newly with said minimum similarity measure as one input and the distance information obtained through said distance calculating means as another input, and means to output the contents stored in said path information register corresponding to said time point n as new path information.
1. A continuous speech recognition system for recognizing an input speech composed of a plurality of continuously spoken words comprising: a speech analyzing means for analyzing an input signal at every given frame time point m and outputting an input pattern expressed in a time series of a feature vector consisting of a predetermined number of feature parameters; an input pattern memory to store said input pattern; a reference pattern memory to store a reference pattern consisting of said feature vector in the same format as said input pattern for each of plurality (V) of predetermined words to be recognized; a distance calculating means to calculate the distance between the feature vector of said input pattern at a time point m and the feature vector of the reference pattern of the v-th words at a time point n under a predetermined distance formula by changing the time point n of the reference pattern of the v-th word in an arbitrary order from the start point to end point N.sup.v while changing the reference pattern v from the first word to end word V for each time point m of the input pattern, said each time point m changing from the start point to an end point M; an asymptotic calculating means to calculate a similarity measure D(v, n) given by the cumulative sum of said distances at said time points n and path information F(v, n) indicating a time point of the input pattern at the start point of said v-th reference pattern on a path through which said similarity measure D(v, n) has been obtained by a predetermined asymptotic expression according to a dynamic programming process while changing the time point n of the reference pattern of the v-th word in an arbitrary order from the start point to end point N.sup.v and while changing the reference pattern v from the first word to end word for each time point m of the input pattern, said each time point m changing from the start point to end point M; a digit similarity measure and digit path information calculating means to select a minimum similarity measure from among the similarity measures at the end time points of reference patterns of all the words obtained through said asymptotic calculating means, and to provide said minimum similarity measure as a digit similarity measure DB(m), a category to which the word corresponding to said minimum similarity measure belongs as a digit recognition category W(m)=v, and path information corresponding to said minimum similarity measure as a digit path information FB(m) at said time point m, for each time point m of the input pattern, said time point m changing from the start point to end point M; an initializing means to give digit similarity measure DB(m-1) as an initial value of similarity measure and to give a time point (m-1) as an initial value of said path information at a time point m while changing the time point m of the input pattern from the start point to end point M; a decision means to obtain a recognized result at a final digit from said digit recognition category W(M) at the end point M of said input pattern, to obtain an end point of said input pattern on the digit previous to the final digit by one from said digit path information at the end point M, to obtain a recognized result on the digit previous to said final digit by one from said digit recognition category at the end point, and to obtain a recognized result at each digit sequentially toward the start point of said input pattern.