The heart and positive emotions: a view from Amharic

Abstract This study analyzes the Amharic lexrme ləbb ‘heart’ from a cognitive linguistics perspective, contributing to what is known about conceptualization through body-part terms in connection to emotions. Based on the results of the metaphoric and metonymic extension of ləbb ‘heart’ from Amharic monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, the study finds that the heart is intrinsically associated with positive emotions such that it can metonymically stand for courage and love. The concept of “heart” in Amharic is also commonly used with words suggesting negative emotions. However, this connection is mainly possible through compositionality. The Amharic model of the association of the “heart” to positive emotions is also valid for other unrelated languages. Our results suggest that natural languages share important similarities in the body-based conceptualization of emotions.