German sibilants and consonant clusters.

Several years ago, as I was beginning my study of
German, I noticed that no native word (at least in
Hochdeutsch) had a cluster of any kind that had [s] +
consonant; it was always [S].

I'm curious as to why this is so. I was told by my
linguistics professor that Old High German had two
variants of /s/ — an apical and a laminal, most
likely, he said.

This makes sense, if the laminal became reinterpreted
as a postalveolar [S] after /sk/ palatalized to [S].

Is this so, and if it is indeed so, how did this
original opposition between apical and laminal
sibilants evolve from the original PIE consonant inventory?


		
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