> In a real sense, Chinese is the direction that all languages are heading.
In recent history, it seems. We don't know whether the trend will continue, do we? Do we even know why languages used to be less analytic?
The argument you suggested "The reason is that it is easy for a language to lose grammatical rules, but very hard to gain them." would not explain why a lot of languages used to have inflections in the first place?
I don't know about Chinese, but I thought that one argument about languages getting simplified involved lots of 2nd-language speakers. Different rules of evolution would apply to the language of an empire (like new-world Spanish, or Urdu) compared to a closed group.
In recent history, it seems. We don't know whether the trend will continue, do we? Do we even know why languages used to be less analytic?
The argument you suggested "The reason is that it is easy for a language to lose grammatical rules, but very hard to gain them." would not explain why a lot of languages used to have inflections in the first place?