The majority of the allophones of /w,j,r,l/ are voiced oral resonants, and the occurrence of voiceless fricative allophones of all four phonemes in the same phonetic environment, i.e., after a voiceless stop or fricative in the same syllable, whilst no doubt connected with their phonemic distribution, is an added mark or their coherence as a class.
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O’Connor et al. (1957) studied this question.