Quote Originally Posted by Misha Tal View Post
But what if it was something like "Целый мир освещает твое лицо"? Now which one is being illuminated by which one?
You can't tell. Perhaps for most people, the predominance of the Subject-Verb-Object construction would bias it towards the world illuminating the face. I assume you are asking about situations when set expressions also don't give a clue about what governs what.