Whether the production of a morphologically complex word recruits compositi
onal procedures appears to depend on the properties of the particular word-
formation process at hand. Since the types of word formation that appear to
enlist composition include regular inflection and productive derivation, a
n argument can be made for the role of morphological productivity in determ
ining the approach taken to lexical production. However, morphological prod
uctivity typically entails semantic compositionality, so it could be that c
ompositional procedures are exploited only when the meaning of the complex
word is exhaustively characterised in terms of the meanings of its immediat
e morphological constituents. It is argued here that the lexical production
system takes a compositional approach to processing morphologically comple
x forms in cases of productive word formation even if the semantics of the
word cannot be derived formally from the meaning of its constituents. Evide
nce is presented from a case of acquired naming impairment in a patient who
se ability to name objects with compound names is particularly disrupted.