Today I’m going to write briefly about Mayan possessed-heart constructions. The examples are from the book Language, Culture, and Mind: Natural Constructions and Social Kinds, which is a very interesting and worthwhile read in my opinion.

To illustrate what we’re talking about here, consider the following example:

In this example and similar ones, a psychological state is expressed by a physical state, activity or change in the heart. This example isn’t a million miles away from English expressions like “His heart wasn’t in it”, but the difference is that this pattern is apparently very common and highly productive in the language of the Q’eqchi’-Maya, to the point where it is the main way to express some psychological states. Here’s a short summary of other possessed heart expressions:

Literal meaning	Psych meaning
One’s heart is doing X	To want to do X
One’s heart exists (to/for X)	To be interested in X
One’s heart becomes small	To regret
One’s heart is doubled	To be conflicted
One’s heart is broken	To be dissuaded
X exists in one’s heart	To remember X
X remains in one’s heart	To remember X
X drops into one’s heart	To remember X
X is lost in one’s heart	To forget X
X comes to one’s heart	To agree X
X is born in one’s heart	To decide X
To think X in one’s heart	To plan, intend X
To say X in one’s heart	To think
One’s heart is tasty	To be happy
One’s heart is bitter/painful	To be sad
One’s heart is red	To be jealous
One’s heart is foreign	To be estranged
One’s heart is tame	To be humble
One’s heart is fast	To be smart
One’s heart is straight	To be loyal
One’s heart is soft	To be humble
One’s heart is hard/strong	To be brave
One’s heart is small	To be timid
One’s heart is two-sided	To be insincere
One’s heart is unitary	To be united
One’s heart is seated	To be content
One’s heart is levelled	To be content
One’s heart is standing	To be animated

I find the idea that a language and culture could prefer this kind of very explicit metaphor of the heart for inner life as an alternative for monomorphemic (or at least synchronically unanalysable to most speakers) psych verbs quite fascinating. The very presence of the word ch’ool “heart” marks a modal shift and converts an expression from an event happening in the real world to one happening in the mind of the heart’s owner.

There’s also something very charming, somehow, about mapping people’s states of mind to the physical states of their hearts as a matter of every day language, instead of restricting it to poetry and niche expressions.