Old English deadjectival paradigms: Productivity and recursivity

Abstract

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.