58. The method of claim 57 wherein each phone machine has associated therewith (i) at least one transition and (ii) actual label output probabilities, each actual label probability representing the probability that a specific label is generated at a given transition in the phone machine, and wherein the acoustic match performing step includes the steps of: (aa) forming simplified phone machines which includes the step of replacing by a single specific value the actual label probabilities for a given label at all transitions at which the given label may be generated in a particular phone machine; and (bb) determining the probability of a phone generating the labels in the string based on the simplified phone machine corresponding thereto.
58. The method of claim 57 wherein each phone machine has associated therewith (i) at least one transition and (ii) actual label output probabilities, each actual label probability representing the probability that a specific label is generated at a given transition in the phone machine, and wherein the acoustic match performing step includes the steps of: (aa) forming simplified phone machines which includes the step of replacing by a single specific value the actual label probabilities for a given label at all transitions at which the given label may be generated in a particular phone machine; and (bb) determining the probability of a phone generating the labels in the string based on the simplified phone machine corresponding thereto. 59. A method as in claim 58 wherein each sequence of phones corresponding to a vocabulary word represents a phonetic baseform, the method including the further step of: (cc) arranging the baseforms into a tree structure in which baseforms share a common branch for as long the baseforms have at least similar phonetic beginnings, each leaf of the tree structure corresponding to a complete baseform.