“The container schema in Homeric Greek”.

Ancient Greek grammar provides evidence for the close relatedness of the notions of con-tainer and instrument. Cognitively these notions are connected by our experience, as many entities can serve both as containers and as instruments. The paper describes the usage of three prepositions of containment, en, ‘in’, ek, ‘out of’, and eis, ‘into’, in Homeric Greek, and their occurrence with different types of landmark. It is argued that especially body part nouns display a grammatical treatment that mirrors their double nature of possible containers as well as of natural instruments.