> Being inflected is a mark of a language that hasn't yet become positional. It is therefore an objective mark of primitiveness in the language.
This assumes that positional languages work better or are more efficient, but that is not clear to me.
"flowery descriptive speech" a la Jane Austen communicates complex ideas. It is just that different subject have different concept of what constitute useful complexity.
Both Terry Tao and Jane Austen could have written their works in almost any language with little impediments.
In particular here one of the scientific advantages of English is not its simple morphology but its permissive lexicon, where creating new word for new concept is a common occurrence.
If by historical accident we happened to speak Latin to this day it is likely that the major loss (compared to English) would be puns.
Being inflected is a mark of a language that hasn't yet become positional. It is therefore an objective mark of primitiveness in the language.
Sophistication, on the other hand, is in the eye of the beholder. Which is more sophisticated, flowery descriptive speech or very simple speech that communicates complicated ideas? Arguments can be made for or against Jane Austen or Terence Tao as being more sophisticated.
Latin allows one to say little at great length while sounding very smart. Which a classical education teaches us to value. But when we say things simply we can think and express more complicated things. Which is more sophisticated?
Please put me on the side of Terrence Tao.