This article presents an accessible introduction to agent-based modelling for non-computationallinguists, more specifically historical linguists, who may find it to be a usefuladdition to their methodological toolbox. We will discuss both the possibilities and limitationsof this technique and in doing so, attempt to show how computational modellingcan be complementary with the empirical methods of historical linguists. Furthermore,this paper presents a walkthrough of the various steps in the design of such a model. Toserve as an example, we will present a basic agent-based model of the competitionbetween regular and irregular verb inflection in Dutch.
