Grammaticalization in Russian: from noun to preposition (a case study of body part names).

The article is devoted to grammaticalization in Russian. On the base of body part nouns glaz (‘eye’) and litso (‘face’) the grammaticalization channel «nounpreposition» has been described. Twenty-seven prepositional units have been revealed and ranked according to the degree of their grammaticalization. Fifteen of them have been proven to be highly grammaticalized and to belong to prepositions as a part of speech.