Greek question (night?)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/11/99 3:34:25 PM, you wrote:

<<[ Moderator's response:
>  Greek _nuks, nuktos_, Latin _nox, noctis_, Sanskrit _nak (IIRC), naktam_,
>  Hittite _nekuz = nek{^w}t+s_, ...
>  --rma ]>>

Does it matter that /t/ does not appear in most of the nom. singulars?  I also
saw nocz in Polish, nos in Welsh, but was not given declension.  It seems the
/t/ only makes its appearance in the nom sing in German, French and Sanskrit.
Please forgive my ignorance, but sometimes in analysis on this list, this base
morphology makes a difference.  Why is the /t/ not regarded as just a fairly
common stem that sometimes emerges in root and sometimes doesn't?  I hope this
doesn't sound terribly stupid.

Regards,
Steve Long

[ Moderator's response:
  In those languages in which it does not appear, other processes are at work,
  usually word structure constraints.  Greek and Latin, for example, restrict
  the inventory of phonemes which can appear word-finally (Greek much more so
  than Latin); Latin reduces final *-ss to -s (including the results of the
  more development of *ts > ss); Sanskrit will allow nearly any voiceless stop
  to appear in final position, but radically reduces final clusters to their
  first member; and so on.
  --rma ]