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

> From: Richard Wordingham <richard@...>
>> --- In qalam@... com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@ ..>

wrote:

>>> IN INDIC, THERE IS ONLY ONE POSSIBLE PLACEMENT OF EACH VOWEL MARK,...

>> Thank you for that clarification. I'd been wondering whether CVC and
>> CCV aksharas could be written differently when the vowel went above

> NO SUCH THING AS A CVC AKSHARA. AKSHARAS DON'T CORRESPOND TO

SYLLABLES, JUST TO SEQUENCES OF CONSONANTS.

I'm not alone in my use of terminology. I found this at :

"Devanāgarī has 12 svara (pure sounds, or vowels) and 34 vyanjana
(ornamented sounds, consonants). An akshara is formed by the
combination of zero or one vyanjana and one or more svar, and
represents a phonetic unit of the shabda (utterance). The akshara is
written by applying standard diacritical modifiers to the vyanjana
corresponding to the svara. An akshara is usually more basic and
predictable than the syllable in English. For example, the English
'cat' (considered to have just one syllable) is written as two
aksharas, the 'k-a' and the 'ta'."

Would you prefer me to say 'CVC and CCV orthographic syllables'? In
the Lanna script there are occasional differences between the
consonant parts depending on the phonetic placement of the vowel.
There are three* consonants for which the choice of subscript form
correlates with the phonetic structure of the orthographic syllable.
Moreover, double Indic /s/ ligates in the CCV case, but not the CVC case.

*In the current Unicode proposal
(http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3121.pdf), it looks like two,
because one of the two subscript forms for BA (= Indic /p/) is also
the only subscript form of HIGH PA (modified form of Indic /p/). The
argument for BA having two subscript forms is not overwhelming - the
situation is reminiscent of the split of 'u' and 'v' in the Roman
alphabet with a hint of the split of 'I' and 'i' in the Turkish
writing system. The current Unicode proposal seems to be the tidiest
solution to a messy problem.

>> and the second consonant ascended to the baseline from which the
>> consonants hang. I know of a Khmer font where they are displayed
>> differently, but I wasn't sure whether that was a design flaw.

>> I have seen a difference in anusvara placement in a CVCV akshara.

> A FORTIORI, NO SUCH THING AS A CVCV AKSHARA.

>> I've taken this as unwelcome evidence that in that writing style the
>> sole such combination of anusvara and final vowel was a vowel symbol
>> in its own right.

Here's a nasty terminological edge case. The word in question in
Indic-based but not necessarily reversible 'transliteration' is
'bya:dhi'. It may be written in at least two ways, as shown in
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/richard.wordingham/lanna/byaadhi.gif .
The first way is in three columns. Column 1 is 'b' with subscript
'y'; the subscript ascends to the hanging baseline. Column 2 is
dependent vowel 'a:'. Column 3 is 'dh' with subscript 'i'. I trust
that you will agree that this form has three aksharas. The second
form is in two columns. Column 1 is again 'b' with subscript 'y'.
Column 2 is dependent vowel 'a:' with superscript 'i' and subscript
'dh'. How many aksharas does the second form have?

Richard.