This article focuses on Old English derivational paradigms with adjectival bases and assesses their productivity and degree of recursivity. On the theoretical side, the article puts forward the concept of paradigmatic productivity in order to gauge the relative importance of lexical categories as bases of word-formation. On the descriptive side, the analysis identifies the basic adjectives of Old English, gathers their derivatives, assigns a base of derivation to each deadjectival lemma and lists the instances of recursive word-formation. The main conclusions of the research are that the derivational paradigms of adjectives are not as productive as the ones based on strong verbs and that recursive formations result from affixation far more often than from compounding and zero derivation.

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This article deals with two theoretical aspects of lexical derivation, productivity and graduality. After a discussion of transparency and opaqueness in Old English word-formation, it focuses on lexical productivity and puts forward a typology of recursive phenomena. On the basis of this typology, the morphological template of the Layered Structure of the Word is revised. The main conclusion is that a more diachronically oriented analysis is likely to opt for a decompositional template, whereas a more synchronically directed study which seeks typological validity will probably favour the template with one functional slot. If the focus is on diachronic linguistics, a template based on minimal constituent analysis can guarantee a detailed description of the derivational steps of the word, including non-affixal derivation and semantically opaque affixes.

The aim of this article is to identify the primary adjectives of Old English as well as to gather the derivational paradigms that revolve around them. All in all, 459 primary adjectives are identified, which function as the base of 6,587 derivatives. Two conclusions are drawn from the analysis. In the first place, the concept of derivational paradigm contributes to the explanation of the overall organization of the lexicon, while allowing for the discussion of questions that are at the core of current morphological theory, such as recursivity and productivity. Secondly, that primary adjectives play a significant role in Old English derivation. Even though they are not as productive as strong verbs, primary adjectives function as base of derivation for a significant number of non-basic terms, which, moreover, belong to all lexical categories and nearly all grammatical classes.