17. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein each first speech pattern acoustic feature signal T(n) is a linear predictive feature of the n.sup.th time frame of the first speech pattern, and each second speech pattern acoustic feature signal R(m) is a linear predictive feature of the m.sup.th time frame of the second speech pattern.
17. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein each first speech pattern acoustic feature signal T(n) is a linear predictive feature of the n.sup.th time frame of the first speech pattern, and each second speech pattern acoustic feature signal R(m) is a linear predictive feature of the m.sup.th time frame of the second speech pattern. 18. The apparatus of claim 17 wherein the distance signals are generated according to EQU d(T(n), R(m)))=log (T(n).multidot.R(m))) where .multidot. represents the dot product.