Don't know what you mean here really, but the Indic scripts work at a core syllabic C-V level, and in order to fit with real languages, it was effectively necessary to fill the holes by inventing the implicit concept of null consonnants that combine with vowels, even of these compound are not breakable in the common sense (so we have now combining vowels, and plain vowel "letters").
It is in fact very intrigatin that scripts invented to model the phonology (instead of representing the semantic or using simplifications of icons showing the some concrete objects). have all started by isolating first the consonnants, even though they are much less heard than vowels. However they are easier to sort and have less variations in a given language, than vowels which can be altered with great flexibility. Vowels have always been late to be représented, they were felt to be too much "animal", where cononants with their articulations are more specififcally "humane" (at least if we just consider those consonnants we can distnguish with our humane ears, because animals certainely also have articulated "speech" and that are more distinctinve than the oral vowels we hear from them. Only some more recent alphabets have clearly separated consonants and vowels, trying to give them equal importance (but with lots of problems, that's why we have wide variations between languages about how vowels are represented, even within the same script, or with the same language with changes rapidly being adopted in orthographies in a short language history). But other scripts are more pragmatic ad in order to more closely the patterns of use in their phonology, vowels are gven second degree of importance (true for all Semitic abjads and Indic abugidas). Things have been complicated because only a few vowels have evolved to be very discrimant in the phonology. This caused them to become plain letters and being interpreted as "consonnants" (or as "half-vowels") withe the concept of matres lectionis (visible in Semitic abjads and being applied more systematically to become what we have in Alphabets derived from old Greek, or that have borrowed some concepts from alphabetic scripts). Beside all this, the graphical forms of scripts does not really matter and is not something that will limit the evolutions (even in "ideographic" scripts, like sinograms, things are much less radical than what their basic concept may suggest). I would avoid smply to make any normative reference to any rectangular form (for the visible shape, or for the form of the theoretical tabular C-V combinations, as if there was two orthogonal axis, we've seen that the distinction between consonnants and vowels is very fuzzy anf highly dependant on the phoyonoly and statistical distribution of usages in a 'language" made of lots of dialects more or less mutually intelligible abd more or less specifalized by domain of humane activity, but also very influenced by social interactions with other languages or other domains). Scripts and languages are not like natural species : they don't follow absolute rules for living and for diversifying themselves (they are not evolutions based on birth and death, or massive accidents or under unexpected and unpredictable mutations). They evolve even if there were strong rules set by some other people and nobody can block these evolutions (mutations are much more rapid than in nature, because every humane will try to mutate their languages themselves many times during his life). So scripts and laguages are both copying themselves, reinventing the same things, and all tend to be specialized and innovate everywhere. It's then difficult to create an universal standard that will not also evolve ar the same time, notably when trying to encode them, because scripts and languages are evoluting simultaneously under contradicting directions : convergence on some aspects and divergence on some others (or frequently on the same aspects !). Even if we thnk that many languages and scripts are endangered (they are!), lots of them are also being created evey day, and will also disappear even faster, the only strong resistance beng those set by "standards" trading practices, moreor less protected by laws (such as corporate logos, trademarks, and "most valued" artistic creations generating revenues, but also being the most "abused" ones with many derivatives). 2013/9/18 Stephan Stiller <stephan.stil...@gmail.com> > I have been told that Devanagari contains letters (or a letter) that were > invented merely to complete the rectangular C-V table; not sure to what > extent they (or it) were used subsequently. > > Wiki > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Devanagari<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari> > tells me about the letter ॡ (signifying "ḹ", I assume this means a > syllabic long "l"). Are there other examples? What about other Indic > scripts? > > Stephan > > >