State-dependent speaker clustering for speaker adaptation

Abstract

A system and method for adaptation of a speaker independent speech recognition system for use by a particular user. The system and method gather acoustic characterization data from a test speaker and compare the data with acoustic characterization data generated for a plurality of training speakers. A match score is computed between the test speaker's acoustic characterization for a particular acoustic subspace and each training speaker's acoustic characterization for the same acoustic subspace. The training speakers are ranked for the subspace according to their scores and a new acoustic model is generated for the test speaker based upon the test speaker's acoustic characterization data and the acoustic characterization data of the closest matching training speakers. The process is repeated for each acoustic subspace.