Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Language complexity seems to be influenced by populationcharacteristics such as the proportion of adult learners. Onepotential explanation for this link is that native speakers ac-commodate to non-native speakers, simplifying their languageuse during such interactions: learners may then acquire a lesscomplex language. We model accommodation in interaction ina Bayesian framework, where in order to accommodate appro-priately, an agent must first infer their interlocutor’s linguisticabilities. We find that when the agent consistently accommo-dates, learners end up with a simplified language, due to a rein-forcing effect between an initially underinformed learner andan accommodating native speaker.