12. A method for recognizing continuous speech according to claim 11 further characterized in that said utterance segment determining step comprises for each reference word series partial candidate of the preceding word position interval generating a set of utterance segment beginning points for each reference word of the current word position interval; said word position interval similarity forming step comprises selecting the utterance segment for said reference word jointly responsive to the set of utterance beginning points, the utterance feature signals and said reference word feature signals; and generating a signal representative of the distance between the feature signals of the reference word and the feature signals of the selected utterance segment for said reference word.
12. A method for recognizing continuous speech according to claim 11 further characterized in that said utterance segment determining step comprises for each reference word series partial candidate of the preceding word position interval generating a set of utterance segment beginning points for each reference word of the current word position interval; said word position interval similarity forming step comprises selecting the utterance segment for said reference word jointly responsive to the set of utterance beginning points, the utterance feature signals and said reference word feature signals; and generating a signal representative of the distance between the feature signals of the reference word and the feature signals of the selected utterance segment for said reference word. 13. A method for recognizing continuous speech according to claim 12 further characterized in that the word position reference word selecting step comprises identifying the reference word with the minimum distance signal below a first preassigned threshold and the reference words with distance signals within a preassigned distance of the minimum distance signal reference word responsive to the reference word distance signals for each reference word series partial candidate.