Wałowy, Alexander: Love as composition: a set-theoretic account of affective structure across relationship types

_Zenodo_. 2026Ordinary language treats love as a polysemous term denoting distinct affective states for partners, children, friends, and parents. This paper formalizes an alternative view: love is a single atomic component, and apparent differences between types of close relationships arise from the additional components composed with it. Using a discrete set-theoretic framework, the paper introduces a signature of emotional atoms partitioned into love (ℓ), overlays (A), and derivatives (D); axi