Markedness Model

Okay kiddo, so imagine you have a bunch of apples and bananas. You know that some things are more common than others - like apples are more common than bananas. This is kind of like the "markedness model" in linguistics.

In language, some sounds are more common than others. For example, the "p" sound is more common than the "q" sound. Linguists use the markedness model to describe this difference.

Basically, they say that some sounds are "marked" because they are less common, while others are "unmarked" because they are more common. It's kind of like how bananas are marked because they are less common than apples.

The markedness model helps linguists understand why some sounds are used more often than others in different languages. It also helps them study how languages change over time as certain sounds become more or less marked.

So, in short, the markedness model is a way to describe how common or rare certain sounds are in language, and how that affects the way people use language.