A method of speech recognition is provided that identifies a production-related
dynamics value by performing a linear interpolation between a production-related
dynamics value at a previous time and a production-related target using a time-dependent
interpolation weight. The hidden production-related dynamics value is used to compute
a predicted value that is compared to an observed value of acoustics to determine
the likelihood of the observed acoustics given a sequence of hidden phonological
units. In some embodiments, the production-related dynamics value at the previous
time is selected from a set of continuous values. In addition, the likelihood of
the observed acoustics given a sequence of hidden phonological units is combined
with a score associated with a discrete class of production-related dynamic values
at the previous time to determine a score for a current phonological state.