Abstract
Among the movable consonants in Ancient Greek a special case is word-initial s-, due to the fact that in etymologically cognate word sets some items have this s- and others lack it. Despite the various explanations offered so far none seems to be entirely satisfactory.
The phonotactics of root structure of Indo-European allows roots of the shape sCV, e.g. PIE *speḱ-/*spoḱ- ‘to see, watch’, as in Lat. speciō ‘I look at’, Av. spasiieiti ‘(s)he/it looks at’, Skt. causative spāśáyate ‘(s)he/it shows’, OHG spehōn ‘watcher’ (cf. Eng. spy) and …