Marathi repha

[Jacob Baltuch]

Ashok Aklujkar wrote:

>The sign seems to have phonemic significance in Marathi: daryaa, plural of
>darii 'cave, cavern, valley,' pronounced without stress on "a" and written
>as daR'yaa,  means something different from daryaa 'ocean, sea, pronounced
>with stress on "a" and written as daRyaa.

So the _only_ difference between R and R' is that a cluster beginning with
R' does not make the preceding vowel heavy?

Can that R' occur at the beginning of clusters of more than 2 consonants,
and _if_ the answer to that is no, could one analyze the situation as if
for example R'y was not a sequence of two phonemes but one single phoneme?