Common Slavic *v/*w

Torsten and I have been carrying on a discussion privately (it was private because it arose from comment on those same Dutch girls that caused so much commotion earlier) about the nature of Common Slavic *v/w. Torsten is of the opinion that it was everywhere /w/ because its treatment in some Slavic languages is so similar to that of *w in Danish which is known to have been /w/ everywhere (e.g. in Belarusian, dialects of Ukrainian and Slovenian, some West Slavic dialects). I was of the opinion that it was the labiodental approximant (X-SAMPA /P/), with labiovelar approximant allophones possible or later developed in preconsonantal and final position. One reason I cited for this was the observation that while PIE /w/ was never lost, the [w]-element in PIE *kW, *gW, *gWH was entirely lost in Common Slavic. This suggested to me that any [w], including the [w]-element of labiovelar plosives, must have changed in pronunciation in Common Slavic, perhaps lost entirely after velars but shifted to labiodental elsewhere (although I don't know the reason for this differential treatment). I wondered why /kv/ and /gv/ (or /Hv/) occurred at all in modern Slavic, which Torsten explained as due to loanwords (but I know that in Polish *k^w and *g^w/g^hw became /kv/, /gv/ at least before back vowels). Anybody want to weigh in on this or have any comments or insight?

This led to me remarking to Torsten that I never understood why in Spanish and Portuguese, Latin */kwi/ and */kwe/ became /ki/ and /ke/, but */kwa/ remained /kwa/. I said that it seemed more logically or politically motivated than phonetically motivated, by which I really meant that it did not seem like a natural phonetic change, it looks more like an artificial selective change. Anyway, Torsten replied that it was a practical difference, in that since /ki/ and /ke/ became /c^i/ and /c^e/ (with subsequent developments), then /kwi/ and /kwe/ could form a new /ki/ and /ke/ to replace the lost phoneme sequences, and at the same time get rid of the difficult labial combination (in his words). /ka/ remained /ka/, however, and thus /kwa/ had to remain /kwa/ or else it would lead to confusion with words that originally had /ka/. Now I can understand such a practical need, but to me it doesn't seem like a natural phonetic change, and looks like such a selective treatment of /kw/ would have to be instituted artificially or wilfully, as though at first /kwa/ became /ka/ but then to reduce ambiguity they reverted it to /kwa/ perhaps by teaching this pronunciation. After all, if naturally speakers didn't like the combinations /kwi/ and /kwe/, why would they like the combination /kwa/? Torsten had a retort to this but I forget what it was. In any case, does anyone know the reason for this selective treatment of /kw/ in Spanish and Portuguese? In Italian /kw/ fundamentally remained /kw/ in all positions, except in the common words <qui:> and <quid> which perhaps due to low stress became <chi> and <che>, and due to dissimilation in <cinque> (but the second /kw/ was indeed preserved, even before /e/ -- also <quercia>, <quindici>, possibly <querelare> if this was not a learned adoption from Latin), so why did it develop so strangely in Spanish and Portuguese? Or is the development not strange, and could it be analogous to the loss of *W in *kW, *gW, *gWH in Common Slavic -- which, however, occurred in all positions regardless of following vowel?


Andrew