Ok, you're going completely beyond the bounds of what you had claimed to be talking about. First of all, there was a major script reform for Thai in (IIRC) 1253 CE, which effectively decoupled it from its Indic forebears. Next, Lanna and Lao are offshoots of this, not direct descendants of Brahmi, so there's even less reason to suppose they should resemble Brahmi. As for Khmer, even less is available to know, but I haven't seen anything suggesting the existence of a "CVC" akshara.

If Lanna has a syllable-boundary-marker, it doesn't have Indic-style aksharas at all! Just as Tibetan has syllable-markers and doesn't form the same sort of akshara. Ditto for Tamil, which marks not syllables but vowelless consonants individually.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...



----- Original Message ----
From: Richard Wordingham <richard@...>
To: qalam@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, November 26, 2006 3:00:19 PM
Subject: Nature of Aksharas

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

> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@.. .

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

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

>>> 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

I withdraw that comment.

>> > 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 :

>> "Devanā garī 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,...

> TRYING TO IGNORE THE FLOWERY VOCABULARY, NOTHING IN THE ABOVE CLAIMS
ANYTHING DIFFERENT FROM WHAT I SAID.

Well, it does include the vowels in the aksharas. I thought you might
be objecting to their inclusion. I hadn't expected you to be unaware
of the CVC aksharas, so I thought your objection was terminologicial.

>> Would you prefer me to say 'CVC and CCV orthographic syllables'? In

> IT IS SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE TO CREATE A CVC ORTHOGRAPHIC SYLLABLE IN AN
INDIC SCRIPT.

> I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE LANNA SCRIPT IS (WHERE ARE YOU DERIVING YOUR
INFORMATION? ), BUT IF YOU ARE REPORTING ACCURATELY, THEN IT HAS
DEVIATED FROM THE PATTERN OF INDIC SCRIPTS.

Amazing Thailand!

OK, it's an eight year old advertising slogan, and it's not just
Thailand. The Lanna script was used from the Shan states to Laos
(including ethnically Lao areas now incorporated in Thailand) as the
script for Pali, and to a lesser extent, varying geographically, for
secular matters. It remains the principal script for the Tai Khuen in
Burma and the Tai Lue in China (Sipsong Panna, to be precise). I have
heard that in Thailand publishing in it was criminalised in 1962.

It's becoming something of an antiquarian interest in Northern
Thailand, but in Chiangmai province I've seen an 'order of service'
for use by the officiating monk written in Thai script on one side and
in the Lanna script on another. It was written on folded cardboard,
imitating palm leaf documents.

Most of my information comes from text books written in Thai for
Thais. I also have some Tai Khuen and Northern Thai texts, and two
Northern Thai dictionaries (one multilingual, the other Northern Thai
to Siamese). There's not much in English, which is why I gave you a
reference for the proposal to encode the script in Unicode/ISO 10646.

While the text books teach the writing of CVC aksharas (and implicitly
a rule on when not to use them, though it seems to be slightly
different in Northern Thai and Tai Lue), they do not teach the writing
of CVCV aksharas, just the reading of them. That's a shame, for there
seem to be some restrictions on the combinations of vowels allowed.

Peter Constable has studied the script, but I don't know whether he
still reads the posts on this list.

The CVC extension is not unique to the Lanna script. It is also
found, to a limited extent, in Lao and Khmer. Indeed, the Unicode
Standard gives an example in its section on the Khmer script. The Lao
example also involves subscript Indic /y/ - the letter form concerned
has the Unicode name of 'LAO SEMIVOWEL SIGN NYO'.

The CVCV akshara may be related to what I am tempted to call the CVV
akshara. This is an abbreviation of two CV aksharas with the same
consonant, rather than the use of two vowel symbols in combination to
indicate a third vowel. The CVV akshara might be widespread, but the
only other script I know to use it is the Tibetan script.

> I ALSO HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU MEAN BY "DOUBLE INDIC /s/" OR WHAT "THE
CVC CASE" MIGHT BE.

'Double Indic /s/' means /s/ followed by /s/, as in the Pali genitive
singular ending -assa of -a nouns.

>> *In the current Unicode proposal
>> (http://std.dkuug dk/jtc1/sc2/ wg2/docs/ n3121.pdf) ,

> THE "CURRENT PROPOSAL" FOR _WHAT_? THAT PARAGRAPH IS REPLETE WITH
PRONOUNS WITHOUT ANTECEDENT.

Encoding the Lanna script in Unicode.

> ARE YOU STILL GOING ON ABOUT THAI?

No, the Lanna script, which has clear boundaries between aksharas -
unless some of its extended aksharas are to be regarded as multiple
aksharas. They can contain more than one consonant stack! It does
share one of the ambiguities of Thai, for one cannot always tell
whether an akshara is CVC or CCV.

Richard.




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