The aim of the present work has been to describe the derivational morphology of adjectives in the earliest written Polish texts (12th-l 5th c.). Starting from affixes the following pattern of description has been adopted: quantitative data; characteristics of derivative bases; categorial meanings of derivatives; co-functioning with other affixes; frequency; syntactic functions; reference to Modern Polish. The historical data have been compared with the Modern Polish adjectival derivation- hence the term ‘prospective evolution’ in the title of this monograph. No significant changes have occurred in suffixation, though quantitative relationships between classes may be different. There are few new suffixes, whereas prefixation has become more important mainly due to borrowing (anty-, arcy-, ir-, in-, pre- etc.). Some functions of suffixes become fixed (e.g. -awy, -aty, -owaty, -ly) while other morphemes lose their semantic contents. The old material function of -any derivatives is lost and the class of -owy possessive derivatives becomes smaller, together with the weakening of morphological ways of expressing possessive relationships, especially with proper nouns. Owing to the borrowing processes the range of senses expressed by affixes becomes wider (e.g. temporal relationships post-, neo-, pra- and the attitudinal affixes pro-, anti-). Within these five centuries the Polish language shaped the repertoire of morphemic ways of expressing weak intensity of a feature and also the ability to signal its evaluation (-utki, -uski, -uchny, -enki, -usi). Both native (prze-) and foreign (super-, ekstra-, arcy-) prefixes tend to occurr in positive contexts. Other prefixes of evaluation are nad- (as in nadgorliwy, nadopiekuhczy) and euphemistic -awy. Most striking are the changes in the class of deadjectival adjectives. Derivations such as naszeroki, nawieliki are lost completely. The function of intensifying prze- is narrowed down while new prefixes of foreign origin appear derived on the basis of native morphemes niedo-, prze-. The class of expressive suffixes (-utki, -uski, -utenki, -uczki, -uchny) grows bigger and - most significantly - the deadjectival function of the suffix -awy is fixed. If we add here the grammaticalization of the category of degree (shaping the three-degree relationship by combining morphological and syntactic means), the class of deadjectival adjectives appears to be the one which was most strongly affected by the changes that led to the strenghthening of the modifying class
