In speech-language pathology, homonymy refers to the situation where a child’s different intended words end up sounding the same due to consistent sound errors, resulting in unintentional homophones in the child’s output. The child uses one sound or syllable pattern in place of several distinct target sounds, causing a collapse of phonemic contrasts. For example, a child with a severe phonological disorder might pronounce “key,” “see,” and “tea” all as “tea,” or say “gun” and “sun” both as “dun,” so that words with different meanings become homonymous in the child’s speech.
This loss of contrast can lead to significant confusion for listeners and is a hallmark of a phonological impairment; reducing homonymy is often a key goal in therapy, using methods like minimal pairs or multiple oppositions to teach the child to differentiate sound contrasts.
Holly L. Storkel, “Minimal, Maximal, or Multiple? Contrastive Intervention in Speech Sound Disorders,” Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 53, no. 4 (2022).
Judith A. Gierut, “Nexus to Lexis: Phonological Disorders in Children,” Seminars in Speech and Language 37, no. 4 (2016).
