/hw-/ > /w-/ again

[Larry Trask]

Mark Hale is quite right to point out that virtually all IEists
consider that the PIE ancestor of English /hw-/ was a single segment,
a labialized velar, and not a cluster -- though I have occasionally
seen it suggested that PIE might actually have had a contrast between
a /kw/ cluster and a labialized velar.  (Anybody know if this idea is
still taken seriously?)  But I don't think we can really tell whether
OE /hw-/ was a single segment or a cluster.
 
Likewise, he is probably right to suggest that OE /hl-/, /hr-/, and
/hn-/ were most likely voiceless resonants at the phonetic level, but
again I don't think we can be certain that that's what they were
phonologically.
 
I would make three points.
 
First, OE /hl-/, /hr-/, /hn-/ are, I think, universally agreed to
derive from PIE clusters */kl-/, */kr-/, */kn-/.  Hence there has
certainly been cluster reduction somewhere along the line for these
three, if not for /hw-/.
 
Second, in OE alliterating poetry, /h-/ regularly and freely
alliterates with all of /hw-/, /hl-/, /hr-/, and /hn-/, suggesting
that, if anything, these items were perceived by speakers as
clusters.
 
Third, I myself "feel" my /hw-/ to be a cluster of /h/ + /w/, and
have felt the same since childhood, when I first noticed that English
had phonemes -- even if the phoneticians tell me that I'm actually
producing a single segment, a voiceless glide.
 
The OE spelling is, of course, entirely consistent with the cluster
interpretation, but is hardly decisive.
 
Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
England
 
larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk