I'm not sure how your cond example is related to vector syntax. The decision to use (partition 2 ...) style pairs, rather than extra brackets is orthogonal.

The more important point of literal syntax for composites other than lists is the fact that they are resolved at read time. This means you don't need a macro to have grouping. With (some-macro ((f x) (g y))), you need to force expansion inside the parens. Quoting (some-function '((f x) (g x))) requires forcing evaluation in your function. You could use (vector (f x) (g x)), but now that means some-function gets a vector argument and some-macro would get a list argument with first element 'vector. In Clojure, (some-function-or-macro [(f x) (g y)]) both have a vector as an argument because of the read-time behavior of data structure literals. Huge win in my book.