Re: Devanagari question

From: Antoine Leca (Antoine.Leca@renault.fr)
Date: Mon Nov 13 2000 - 05:21:50 EST


James E. Agenbroad wrote:
>
> Thursday, November 8, 2000
> After sending a comment on the Ra(sup) + independent vowel discussion two
> more general Devanagari questions occurred to me:
> 1. Is a halant/virama ever valid following other than a consonant (or
> consonant and nukta)? My logic being that you cannot remove an inherent
> vowel unless one is present and they are only inherent to consonants..
> 2. Is a vowel (matra or independent) ever valid after a halant/virama?

My understanding is that there are a number of similar cases, which are not
officially prohibited (AFAIK), but does not carry any sense.
For example, how about digits followed by accents (as combining marks)?
Or the kana voicing/voiceless combining marks, when they follow anything
other than hiragana or katakana?

OTOH, some apparently useless cases are, usually for backwards compatibility
reasons, explicitely defined to have some meaning. The first example I have
in mind is the "eyelash" or Nepali Ra. The second is the rule that the combining
dot should follow the lower-case i when there is another above diacritic and one
wants to see the dot.
One can see the special rule for the Ra+halant the same way.

Antoine



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