ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys some of the main predictive differences between rule- and constraint-based formalisms that have taken centre stage in work on Rule-Based Phonology (RBP) since 1993. Since 1993 the RBP has primarily been employed to represent the standard generative alternative to Optimality Theory (OT). RBP shares with Government Phonology a rationalist perspective emphasizing formal parsimony and the role of reason in grammar. The chapter examines predictive differences adduced in the literature as arguments in favor of OT or RBP, focusing for reasons of space on the most-discussed cases, conspiracies and opacity. A famous case study of a conspiracy from the OT literature is Pater's discussion of the proposed *NC̥ constraint in Austronesian languages. Pater begins by observing the case of nasal substitution from the paradigm of the Indonesian prefix məN-. Where this prefix is added to root with an initial voiceless stop, the nasal disappears and the stop is replaced by a homorganic nasal.
