Hello All

I have been intermitantly reading the back post of this group for
quite some time. I am fascinated not so much by the minutae of the
liguistics as to much of the IE. cultural & archeological knowledge
shown. I once read a book entitled "In Search of the Indo-Europeans"
which illustrated a scematic rendering of an isogloss chart
separating the various IE Daughter language groups. It did not list
Illyrian, It did list Albanian & the results were somewhat peculiar.
(at least I thought so). If you base similarity of languages soley
on shared phonemes, only the IE marginalial languages ( LITERALLY:
those at the geographic extremities) have characteristics that are
unique & defineing of the individual family: The chart indicated a
sceema of similarities & differences & degrees of affinity by the
number of isoglosses you would have to cross to get from one daughter
language to another. While not all the languages listed at the IE
site were in this chart, I wonder if any of you know it. Amonst other
odd things , Hittite is an isolgossic island WITH-IN Tocharian, &
Teutonic, Baltic & Slavic represent an issoglossicly chain-linked
group of which Teutonic never received the statem sound innovations.
Other peculiar features are that neither Greek, Armenian, nor
Albanian have uniquely defining phonemes, and MOST SIGNIFICANTLT 9 To
me any way) was the very odd fact that ALBANIAN of all things is
EQUALLY as far (in terms of crossing isoglosses) from the Balto-
Slavic group as it is from Italo-Celtic!. It is ALSO equally as far
from Armenian & Tocharian as it is from the former two ( B-S & I-C)
BUT CURIOUSLY, Take away the Centum/ Statem Isogloss & Albanian is
CLOSER to Italo-celtic & Toch, than it is to Balto-slav or the
Armenian section of a (presumably ancient?) Hellenic-Armenoid-Aryan
complex.If They wrere ALL originally Centums, then The chart suggest
a layering effect: a for lack of a better phrase, a "Trans-carpathian
group", a Middle group:, (Italo-celtic, Alabnian & Toch, & Hittite);
and a Hellenic/Armenoid/Aryan complex united to each other &
separated from the rest by 2 isoglossic distictions; and united with
each other as in the Northern chain fashion of Gamanic & Balto-
slavic. I do not know if this isogloss counting is methodologically
sound; but it is suggestive,as the results sort of affirm the
distribution of the IE daughter languages at the beginings of their
known geographic history, PARICULARLY if one assumes that they
radiated out from a center somewhere; Furthermore, if the isoglosses
presumably lay along the lines of most resistance ( ie: the areas
with the least social connections between groups(ie: the watershed
lines of mountains & uninhabited expanses of large bodies of water),
The chart, re-configured to account for the Tocharians to the East,
looks supiciously like a radiation OUT of the land locked middle
Danubian Basin. & of course there is no common IE work for Ocean,
which I always thought odd, the Black sea being so close to the
Ukraine & all. Anyway, I wondering if any of you know the isoglass
chart I speak of & can name the linguist who produced it. Further
more, as I have no scanning capacity here in the public library, can
one of you scan it in, if you have it? I would be interested in
knowing from the linguists here how up to date its data is, as the
book was not very recent,& no longer available. Thank You.