The Adjective in the Causative Continuum of the Literary Text (Based on Leo Tolstoy's "Father Sergius")

The aim of the research is to determine the causative potential of the adjective as one of the main means of forming the causative continuum and the evaluation field of a literary text. The material for the analysis is the story "Father Sergius" by Leo Tolstoy. In the literary text, language units have the opportunity to manifest their lexical and grammatical nature and to form and develop new, atypical qualities. An obligatory part of the semantic organization of the text is the semantic relations of conditionally that comprise the entire text from the initial phrase to the final one. In the semantic structure of the field of conditionality, the causative effect is recognized as the central element. Causative motivation relations are an important component of a person's background knowledge of the world. In the semantic structure of the text, this aspect plays a very important role in structuring the storyline, in describing the characters' personalities, and in expressing the spatial and temporal organization of the text. The peculiarity of causative relations created by adjectives is their connection and correlation with the evaluative field of the literary text. The evaluation field is the actual linguistic embodiment of the author's modality by specific units and constructions from individual lexemes to syntactic units and larger stylistic and compositional characteristics of the text. The formal way of representing the evaluation field are words with an evaluation component of the meaning; among them, adjectives occupy a dominant position. In the story the "value" meaning conveyed by adjectives becomes the major tool of expressing and explaining the plot twists associated with the moral transformation of the main character. The moral evolution of the main character, or, according to Leo Tolstoy, the "psychological stages" that he goes through, are reflected in the transformation of his name from Stepan Kasatsky, to Father Sergius and then to servant of God. Each of these names has its own range of adjectives: from the most detailed adjective-based description of Prince Kasatsky to no adjective-based description at the end of the story. Here, the character is described through actions because the way of life of the servant of God is presented through routine activities. The evaluative attitude of the main character to the world and to himself, very clearly manifested in his past life, is replaced by its rejection, by the humble recognition of the supremacy of God's will and the realization of his complete subordination to it as the realization of himself as a servant of God. The adjective in the literary text is not just a means of literary expression or of creating a figurative detail. The scope of its semantic manifestation goes far beyond a simple description of an image. The adjective is directly related to the formation of semantic relations, the dominant among which are causative ones.

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