Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics Homonymy in phonological change Homonymy in phonological change

Abstract

ISSN: 0269-9206 (Print) 1464-5076 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/iclp20 Abstract This study examines the role of homonymy as a motivator of phonological change in treatment. The relative effectiveness of two treatment structures in improving the production of treated and untreated error sounds was evaluated. One treat-ment structure emphasized homonymous forms by comparing 1 : 1 a desired ambient target with its corresponding replacement error from the child's gram-mar, consistent with conventional minimal pair treatment (Weiner, 1981). The other treatment did not focus on homonymy, nor did it make explicit reference to a child's grammar. In line with treatment of the empty or unknown set (Gierut, 1989), two errored sounds were simply compared with each other. Differential learning was observed among the treatments such that the non-homonymous structure resulted in greater accuracies of treated sounds and in more new un-treated sounds being added to the phonological system. The findings have poten-tial implications for the status of homonymy in phonological change and in the structure of phonological treatment.