15-07-03 06:39, alex wrote:
> the point is they are necessary for the centum space and the ears hear
> what the mouth says:-)
I don't know what you mean by "the centum space", but the change of
labiovelars into labials is rather uncommon cross-linguistically. I've
seen good examples of it also outside the Indo-European family.
Even in the documented part of the history of English shows that velars
with purely _allophonic_ labialisation are perceptually confusible with
labials: Middle English /x/ (which apparently involved some
labialisation, judging from its vowel-colouring effects) often went to
/f/ after a back vowel, as in <laughter>, <enough>, <rough>, <trough>
and <cough>. In some northern varieties of Scots the word-initial
labiovelar fricative /xW/ (spelt <wh>) has also changed into /f/.
Piotr