Don't touch my phonemes (was: minimal pairs ex: PIE e/o Ablaut)

[petegray]

> Can somebody give me the scoop on Classical Greek?
> Or how about Sanskrit?  Did it have final unaspirated voiceless stops?

Classical Greek had no final stops at all, except for the two words ek and
ouk.  The form oukh is found, as expected, only before a rough breathing.
The word ek uses the form eks to avoid this combination.

Despite this purely phonetic rule about ouk/oux, there are examples in the
Greek New Testament of oukh before pure vowel, and ouk before rough
breathing.  Modern editions tend to "improve" the text and remove them, but
one or two do survive, eg Acts 2:7 oukh idou hapantes, where a word has
intervened.   At Galatians 2:14 the text oukhi ioudaiko:s has been preferred
in modern editions to oukh ioud....

In Sanskrit in absolute final position (ie in pause, or when the word is
isolated) only voiceless unaspirated stops can occur - others are devoiced
and/or de-aspirated.

Peter