On personal domain in the Croatian and German language

Sažetak: Relying on Bally’s approach, this paper discusses the term personal domain (osobna sfera). The goal is to establish which factors are involved in deciding what belongs to this domain. Personal domain is part of a broader language phenomenon known as inalienability, and involves concepts most closely related to a person. Different languages have developed different personal domains, which reflects different perceptions of the person in their respective societies, and depends on the extent to which the category of person is preserved in their language inventories. This paper addresses differences between Croatian and German in the domain of alienability and inalienability, i.e. the personal and the non-personal, when these are expressed by what grammars traditionally refer to as the dative of possession.