I have always been under the belief that many of the Laga Matras in Gurbani such as Sihari and Aunkad are placed at the end of words for grammatical reasons. People who belive all Laga Matras should be pronounced claim there is no such thing as Gurbani grammer stating Gurbani grammer was invented by Professor Sahib Singh under the influence of the British. Their main objection is the structure of Gurbani grammar is exactly similar to English Grammar.
I believe such claims are very weak. Every language has grammer and Gurbani/gurmukhi is a language so it must have grammer. But I believe Gurbani Grammer is distinct, and I dont think Gurbani grammer can be compared to any wordly grammer especially English, but if there is resemblance of Gurbani Grammar with any worldy langauge there surely it would be Sanskirt as Punjabi derives from Sanksrit and many of the Laga Matras in Sanskirt have the same symbols as in Gurmukhi such as the Sihari and Aunkad, and Sanskrit Grammar and Gurbani Grammar share many of the same princples. For exapmple , if their is a "case" ( karak) which is locative there will be a sihari placed at the end of the word. The sihari in both Gurmukhi and Sanskrit looks like
f. On the other hand the English language there is no distinct sign within a word to indicate the word is locative; instead a person can only understand the word is locative because the word is connected to a preposition. Also there are no words in English Grammar to differentiate between the different cases English words only have an apostrophe to distinguish if a word is singular or plural so its clear Gurbani grammar resembles Sanskrit much more then English.
I have noticed In the " grammar cases" of Sanskrit the laga matras is pronounced according to the case. For example the word " to eat" in Sanskrit is written and pronounced differently according to its case. In Locative the word " to eat" os written as आदति ( ek vachan) and pronounced as adati while in the Dative case ( ek vachan) it is written as आदते and is pronounced as adate ( ending pronounced as there is a lava). Notice under the locative case there is a sihari and the sihari is pronounced, but I have always heard many Gursikhs say in Gurmukhi that Sihari and Aunkad dont get prounced at the end of words as the Laga Matra are only there for Grammatical reasons. So my question is why do Laga Matras such as Sihari get pronounced in Sanskrit to differentiate between the cases , but not in Gurmukhi and how is the listener of Gurbani suppose to understand the meanings of the words if the laga matra is not pronounced?