Unfortunately, the most commonly labialized consonants are velar and uvular, not labial, and unless you can find evidence of spontaneous labialization of labial consonants, I would avoid this. Even though you say you do not have many back vowels, if you have any rounded back vowels, one could derive labialization from them through allophonic labialization of preceding consonants, and make that phonemic through syncope.احمکي ارش-ھجن wrote:I need to find a way to develop /Tw Dw kw gw xw Gw/ without /w/ and back vowels, because my ancestor lang does not have enough of the latter and too much of the formerI somehow suspect that bilabials that would cause preceding consonants to become labialized are themselves phonetically rounded, but this is not typically marked phonemically unless a contrast between unrounded and rounded labials exists.
Besides, labialization from following bilabials or such would justify why potential labiovelar-bilabial clusters get metathesized away.
Clearly, but that doesn't mean the rounded front vowels won't back themselves; rounded front vowels already tend to be more back than their unrounded counterparts.[/quote]Also, bilabials seem to be neutral with regard to adjacent vowels frontness/backness.
Except the long term outcome of rounded front vowels appears to favor unrounding over backing, at least in the cases where I have seen rounded front vowels being lost.
Okay, tis true.احمکي ارش-ھجن wrote:Well, [kp gb] are *labial-velar* not labiovelar, very different.No, since there are [kp gb]. (I cannot write the tie diacritic right now but these are single consonants not consonant pairs.) Also note that there exist contrasts between unrounded and rounded labials in some languages.احمکي ارش-ھجن wrote:A rounded labiovelar is redundant, as anything involving the lips is necessarily labialized/rounded