Why phonologists got it right: a principled derivation of OT and HG

This paper argues that OT and HG can be derived from the Innocuous Concatenation Axiom (ICA). This axiom looks at two underlying strings such that the concatenation of any two of their candidate surface realizations is innocuous because it does not create nor dissolve relevant markedness violations. The ICA then requires any categorical grammar to realize the concatenation of any two such underlying strings as the concatenation of their surface realizations of in isolation. The paper offers a complete characterization of the implementations of categorical constraint-based phonology that comply with the ICA. This characterization reveals that OT and HG are the two simplest non-trivial implementations of categorical constraint-based phonology that comply with the ICA. In other words, the ICA provides an axiomatic justification of OT and HG.