mkelkar2003 wrote:
> Fantastic! I think what you are getting at is the following:
>
> If you cannot reconstruct proto-Anatolian how can you reconstruct PIE!
Quite simply, if Anatolian should turn out to be polyphyletic (i.e. an
assemblage defined e.g. on a geographical basis rather than in terms of
common descent), then it would make no sense to talk of Proto-Anatolian.
Polyphyletic groupings may be useful for some purposes, but one has to
remember that such constructs are arbitrary, artificial and informal.
However, since all the members of Anatolian are beyond reasonable doubt
indentifiable as Indo-European, they do share a common ancestor with the
rest of the IE family, and PIE is still reconstructible despite any
controversies concerning the subclassification of IE.
Perhaps a biological analogy will help: "warm-blooded animals" is a
polyphyletic grouping that includes mammals (Mammalia) and birds (Aves).
Both of the latter seem to be well-defined natural taxa (clades), which
means, among other things, that each grouping has developed from a
single ancestral species, and that each contains all the descendants of
such a common ancestor. But there was no "proto-warm-blooded animal"
since the most recent common ancestor of Mammalia and Aves was also
ancestral to many other groups (e.g. crocodylians, pterosaurs, lizards,
snakes -- in fact, all known amniotes with the possible exception of
turtles, according to some phylogenetic analyses). And the common
ancestor wasn't even warm-blooded itself: endothermy developed
independently in two different lineages of its descendants.
Piotr