who can you 'love'?

[John Myhill]

Dear Funknetters,
I'm working on a paper on the meanings of emotion words and I'd appreciate
any thoughts those of you who are native English speakers might have about
possible usages of the word 'love'. I'm in Israel and I have the feeling
that even native English speakers here have their ideas confused by the
fact that the closest word to 'love' in Hebrew has a clearly different
range of usages. I would like to set aside 'love' with the romantic
meaning, and usages of 'love' like 'I just love those shoes!' or 'I just
love Frank Sinatra/Robert Deniro, etc.!', etc., where the object is
inanimate or a celebrity the subject doesn't know and the subject is
expressing enthusiastic liking. The remaining usages, it seems to me, are
restricted to close family members
--parent-to-child, child-to-parent, husband-to-wife (which gets mixed up with
the romantic meaning), grandchild-to-grandparent and vice versa, and between
siblings. Beyond that, it would be difficult for me to imagine using 'love'
maybe to uncles, aunts, or cousins? I myself don't have any. To in-laws?
Not me but maybe other people? I have the vague idea that some English speakers
sometimes use 'love' to refer to their (entirely non-romantic) feelings for
particularly close friends, but this seems very strange to me and I cannot
recall any specific examples of it (I have some recollection of someone
saying something like 'I love you like a brother', but this in itself shows
that 'love' is not normally used outwise the family). I also have the
feeling that 'love' for family members is to a large extent involuntary and
not even an evaluation of that person (the way 'like' is) but rather just a
response to the nature of the relationship--one practically HAS to love
one's mother, father, brother, or sister, unless one has basically severed
relations with them. In Hebrew ''ahav' is freely used for friends--in fact
it's the normal translation of 'like' for friends, so people here I think
are likely to be confused about English 'love' as well. Any opinions on
this? Thanks.
John