--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote:

> Richard Wordingham wrote:
> > Semites seem more privileged than
> > Indians - the former are allowed to click on vowel points in

their

> > native scripts.
>
> That could be because the Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac vowel points

are

> not considered part of the letter, but the vowel marks in an

abugida

> are.

I don't see any evidence for that in Thai. While following and
superscript vowels may be ligated in handwritten Thai, preceding and
following vowels are treated just like consonants when large gaps
are left between letters. The (preceding) 'ae' vowel, which looks
like a pair of (prceding) 'e' vowels, is treated as a unit. Some
handwriting shows horizontal bunching of characters, but that is
just a division into syllables. (In Thai, phonetic CVCCV is
segmented into 'aksharas' as CV.C.CV rather as in Tamil, rather than
the usual CV.CCV. This rule seems even to apply to apply to Pali in
the Thai script!)

Richard.

> "Semites"???? Then why don't you say "Indics"?

1. South India.

2. Grammar.

Richard.