14. A method for recognizing an unknown utterance as one of a set of reference words according to claim 13 wherein said template signal identification step is characterized in that the centermost feature signal set of said cluster is stored as the template signal for said cluster of feature signal sets.
14. A method for recognizing an unknown utterance as one of a set of reference words according to claim 13 wherein said template signal identification step is characterized in that the centermost feature signal set of said cluster is stored as the template signal for said cluster of feature signal sets. 15. A method for recognizing an unknown utterance as one of a set of reference words according to claim 14 wherein said step of producing a signal representative of the distance between the unknown utterance prediction parameter signals and the reference word template prediction parameter signals is characterized in that the number of frames to the endpoint frame of the unknown utterance is determined; a first signal corresponding to the average frame distance between the unknown utterance prediction parameter signals and the template prediction parameter signals until said endpoint frame is generated; the unknown utterance intermediate frame at which the unknown utterance speech signal energy from said intermediate frame to said endpoint frame is a predetermined portion of the total unknown utterance speech signal energy is determined; a second signal corresponding to the average frame distance between the unknown utterance prediction parameter signals and said template prediction parameter signals until said intermediate frame is generated; and the minimum of said first and second signals is selected as said distance representative signal.