The aim of the research is to determine the peculiarities of the semantic development of the reflexes of Indo-European roots belonging to the (S)KER(T)- type and denoting indirect movement (bending, twisting, rotation). This aim has been achieved through establishing a corpus of relevant reconstructed Indo-European roots, describing the phonetic and morphological features of their segments, and gathering, collating and classifying the reflexes of the Indo-European roots with the root archetype (S)KER(T)-. Sixteen semantic groups formed by the Indo-European continuants of the investigated roots have been identified. The common types of semantic diachronic transformations based on the mechanisms of metaphor, metonymy, taboo, narrowing and widening of meanings have been analysed in the reflexes of the Indo-European root archetype (S)KER(T)- 'bend, curve, twist, rotate'. The first chapter of the thesis focuses on a series of theoretical questions related to studies of Indo- European roots in comparative linguistics, including E.Benveniste's theory of the Indo-European root and its criticism, the diversity of approaches to studies of the Indo-European root segments, and the problem of homonymy among the reconstructed Indo-European roots. The latter factor has resulted in numerous contradictions in the etymological interpretation of some Indo-European words and word families. It is concluded that the problem of the ramified homonymy of the reconstructed Indo-European roots can be resolved by shifting the focus of the etymological research from single words onto big classes of reflexes of identical roots with different meanings. In the first chapter of the thesis the phonetic and morphological features of the segments of the Indo-European root archetype (S)KER(T)- are determined. The phenomenon of the Indo-European s-mobile, and the disputable question of rows of Indo-European guttural sounds are considered separately. The peculiarities of the vowelization and infixation of the Indo-European roots are examined. The concept of the Indo-European s-mobile has been modified in compliance with the optimality theory and is considered by the author to be a member of the system of the word-formative affixes. In the Proto-Indo-European and common Germanic and Slavonic languages, these affixes had been undergoing the process of permanent changes in the speech caused by various phonetic, morphological and phonetic-syntactical conditions. The analysis of the peculiarities in the semantic development of the reflexes of the Indo-European root archetype (S)KER(T)- carried out in the second chapter of the thesis, shows the extreme compositional diversity of the families of the Indo-European words derived from the roots of this type. The categories of lexical units that have been established include words which denote various static and dynamic, reflexive and causal aspects of the actions of twisting, bending, and rotating and their consequences. Among the sixteen groups into which the reflexes of the Indo-European root archetype (S)KER(T)- have been divided, nine groups include the lexical units denoting dynamic aspects of indirect movements (weaving, twisting; running; bending; bouncing, blowing; rotating; scattering; tightening, drying up, withering; curling, compressing). The seven remaining groups consist of Indo-European words representing the static aspect of the indirect movements (elements of relief; elements of architectural and household items; rounded items; body parts; defects of an organism; elements of flora and fauna; deception, complications). The wide spectrum of meanings peculiar to the reflexes of the root archetype (S)KER(T)- is explained by the mobility of the seme of crookedness and by the polyvalence of the actions of twisting, bending, rotation in material and spiritual culture of the Indo-Europeans. The study of the reflexes of the Indo-European root archetype (S)KER(T)- helped to reveal the number of lexical units that represent a zone of the semantic field transition, i.e. can be interpreted either as a reflexof *(s)ker- 'bend' or *(s)ker- 'cut', for example, Slav. *krivъ(jь) 'curved'. The lexical units of this kind are used to substantiate the hypothesis concerning the semantic syncretism of the meanings 'bend' and 'cut'. The Indo-European root variants with the root archetype (S)KER(T)- 'bend, curve, twist, rotate' served as the basis for some meanings and common and proper geographic names (those of rivers, hills) in the Indo-European languages. By means of metaphoric and metonymic semantic transposition the notion of crookedness, and protuberance was fixed in the names of hydronymic and toponymic objects, thus reflecting the configurational properties of these relief elements. The realisation of the nomination and semantic motivation models based on the principle of taboo is characterised by the actualisation of pejorative (vs. meliorative) meanings. The reflexes of the Indo-European root archetype (S)KER(T)-, the meanings of which were developed due to the taboo mechanism, are represented by the negative symbolic words denoting diabolic entities and their destructive actions, some body parts and bodily functions, diseases, names of the deceased, and insanity.
