Prepositive adjective in russian proverbs as a means of expressing causal relations

The article deals with Russian proverbs that include a nominal phrase with an adjective as an attributive modifier. The material for the study was proverbial expressions which were compiled from V. I. Dal's collection of Russian proverbs (378 units). The subject of the analysis is prepositive adjectives involved in the formation of cause-effect semantic relations in expressions such as Dobryi kon' borozdy ne isportit (A good horse will not spoil furrow), Staryi drug luchshe novykh dvukh (The old friend is better than the new two ones). The syntactic functions of the adjectives are considered by means of analysis of three thematic groups of proverbs: proverbs showing natural signs, proverbs characterizing a person, proverbs describing a situation. The following regularities affecting the ability of the adjective to realize causal relations in the statements are established: an adjective is included into a semantic part of a nominal phrase (an absolute first position in a sentence); contextual support in the form of a complex of morphological and syntactic means (conjunction-particle и, a comparative form of a nominal predicate, syntactic structures based on comparison); evaluative part of statements (correlation with the idea of positive or negative in presupposition). Finally a syntactic function of an adjective is characterized as a means of creating causal determination of the statement. These premises are linked to linguistic embodiment of causal attribution as a specific characteristic of a person who is referred to the system of values of national culture.