The ability of language to be distorted is unfortunate. In linguistics we talk about discreteness, that is recognizing individual sounds and recombining them following specific guidelines to form new words. For example the sounds [f] [a] [n] [t] [p] (i have no time to use the IPA symbols, bear with me) recombine to form words like ant, pant, fan, tan, pan, but anybody who speaks English can tell you there is no such word as tpn, atp, ntp, and so on. Then there is productivity- the ability to form new meaning from existing words: Koko, the "speaking" gorilla shocked the world when she was able to combine the sign for "water" and "bird" to translate what she saw, a duck in a pond. Duality of patterning is also a distinctly human communicative behavior; as it happens, humans are the only animals that possess "language" as opposed to "communication" so duality of patterning is also a distinctly linguistic behavior. duality of patterning is kind of where discreteness meets productivity; it's when a subject is able to recombine sounds to form new meanings, like the words smog or brunch.
In actuality, the human thought processes is a series of metaphorical comparisons. our linguistic output is always correspondent to a thought despite the fact that it doesn't always seem like it (as characterized by the phrase "think before you speak"). So when we look at linguistic patterns which are metaphorical, we notice that we conceptualized the subject under discussion metaphorically as well. In other words, the conceptual understanding that argument is war is correspondent to phrases such as "he was attacking my claim" or "his logic was indefensible" or "i was able to gain some ground".
Now, armed with these understanding of linguistic patterning, can we begin to answer what is it that we mean when we say "i love you"? Sure. Love is no Battlefield. Love is no Mystery. Love is neither Seeing nor Blind. Love is no Revolution. And, with no disrespect to Ambrose Bierce, the brilliant man that he is, Love is NOT an insanity curable by marriage.
Instead, it is something we try to call a concept and as a concept something we try to embody metaphorically. It's something we talk up, sometimes something we talk down. something we mischaracterize and recharacterize with words. something to write about, something to read about, something to sing about. For me, Love IS loving you, something i have no words for. As you might have guessed, that's precisely the reason why, it took me so many words to explain: I love you.
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I love this one.
when you say "Instead, it is something we try to call a concept and as a concept something we try to embody metaphorically."
To conceptualize is human nature. (=