W & V

Thanks Piotr. Illuminating as always! Is this w/v alternation some
sort of universal tendency? Don't Hawaiian and Swahili also have
this? In any of the languages where [V] is an allophone of /u/ are
there any cases of the syllabic allophone also having labio-dental
approximation in place of rounding? I've never heard nor read of
such a pronunciation but I wonder why it shouldn't be.
-David

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> Rather than searching the archives again, let me just say that I
reacted in the first place against the interpretation of Sanskrit <v>
as phonetic [v] (a labiodental fricative, as in English). [w] for
etymological *w seems not to be that rare in Iranian and Nuristani
languages (though fine details of articulation are not always easy to
recover from book descriptions). Other reflexes are found as well,
including [v] and [b], the latter being also common in modern Indo-
Aryan. A velarised labiodental approximant (let's symbolise it [V]
here) is closely akin to a labial-velar approximant [w].
Historically, [w] is a rather unstable sound. Throughout Europe, [v]
is the predominant modern reflex, though in most branches there is
evidence of its development out of older [w].
>
> Piotr