Time for a conceptual leap: we will assume that the speech to be recognised really was generated by our model.
Concept of generative models
One of the biggest challenges in this course is to think in terms of generative models.
The Gaussian as a generative model
We can think of the Gaussian generating, or "emitting", observations.
Once the concept of a generative model is clear to you, start learning about HMMs from the readings.
Reading
Jurafsky & Martin – Section 9.2 – The HMM Applied to Speech
Introduces some notation and the basic concepts of HMMs.
Jurafsky & Martin – Section 9.4 – Acoustic Likelihood Computation
To perform speech recognition with HMMs involves calculating the likelihood that each model emitted the observed speech. You can skip 9.4.1 Vector Quantization.
