Re: /W/ without /w/?

From:    "Adam F." <hypaholic@...>
> English (at least where I live) has the voiced bilabial approximant, and
> historically English also had a voiceless bilabial approximant.
Do you mean approximant? In all dialects I know of that still preserve
a contrast between <w> and <wh>, the latter is a voiceless bilabial
fricative, not an approximant.  (True voiceless approximants are *very*
marked, if not nonexistent.)

>  Some
> dialects still preserve this in words like 'white' and 'which'. So, I
> think it is highly possible that a language could just have a voiceless
> labial-velar approximant.
This doesn't really follow, since the language in question also has
[w]. The question was whether there is really some implicational universal
a la Greeberg "if [W] then also [w]", and I know of no language that violates
this universal.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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