John asked:
> is there any argument that
> languages are becoming grammatically more simple ...
(a) Simplicity depends on the point of view of the perceiver. A native
speaker of Sanskrit and a native speaker of Mandarin might have very
different views about what a "simple" language is.
(b) "Simple" (for an English speaker) might mean "with minimal inflexion".
This hides the fact that English is a remarkably complex language, with much
of its grammar hidden, and unpredictable. Synonyms are not necessarily
treated grammatically the same, and the rules for each must be learnt
separately. So what on earth does one mean by "grammatically more
simple"...? Overt, regular grammar, such as that found in languages with
complex flexion, could be called "simpler".
(c) All that aside, the simple answer is no. Quite a few people in the
west today only really know languages such as Latin (Greek?), French, German
etc, and so to them there is an apparent simplification from old to modern.
But alas, that is not a general trend, as far as I know.
Peter