Abstract: In a speaker recognition and verification arrangement, acoustic feature templates are stored for predetermined reference words. Each template is a standardized set of acoustic features for one word, formed for example by averaging the values of acoustic features from a plurality of speakers. Responsive to the utterances of identified speakers, a set of signals representative of the correspondence of the identified speaker's features with said feature templates of said reference words is generated. An utterance of an unknown speaker is analyzed and the reference word sequence of the utterance is identified. A set of signals representative of the correspondence of the unknown speaker's utterance features and the stored templates for the recognized words is generated. The unknown speaker is identified jointly responsive to the correspondence signals of the identified speakers and unknown speaker.