Sadly unable to find the source I got that from (an article I read several months ago). It did feature noun declensions quite prominently though, you're right i

Sadly unable to find the source I got that from (an article I read several months ago). It did feature noun declensions quite prominently though, you're right in that respect ;-) My understanding was that as major languages spread and came into contact with speakers of other languages, the cross-pollination led to a net loss in complexity of the original language (due to the fact that it had to accommodate speakers from a wide range of backgrounds). Of course, this effect only applies to those languages that do attain a sufficiently large reach, so my statement above was oversimplified. Again, I am no linguist, so I cannot backup my claims with any scientific literature. My anecdotal experience would, however, confirm the general trend. (Drawing on what I know about English, German, Greek, kiSwahili and the Bantu languages.) What you say about Chinese increasing in complexity strikes me as quite intriguing. Though the self-imposed isolation of the Chinese throughout much of history might account for that, as that must have created quite a strong linguistic insularity.