As Proto-Indo-European was splitting into the dialects that were to become the first generation of daughter languages, different innovations spread over different territories. Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Albanian agree in changing the palatal stops *ḱ, *ǵ, and *ǵh into spirants (s, ś, th, etc.) or affricates—e.g., Sanskrit aśri- ‘sharp edge,’ Old Church Slavonic ostrŭ ‘sharp,’ Armenian asełn ‘needle,’ Albanian athëtë ‘bitter’ beside Greek ákros ‘tip,’ Latin acidus ‘biting,’ all from a basic element *H2eḱ- ‘sharp, pointed.’ (Spirants, also called fricatives, are sounds produced with audible friction as a result of the airstream passing through a narrow, but unstopped, passage in ...(100 of 7342 words)