One fundamental difference must lie in the manner of production by the individual brain. Newly coined metaphor draws upon elements of speech, whose primary functions have hitherto lain separately elsewhere. In metaphor that has become institutionalized, the same elements, though they retain distinct distributed uses as well, also have a separate availability specific to the present construction. In traditional philosophical terms, the difference might be said to lie in the character of the associations of a metaphor's components. If we imagine a succession of associative images prompted by the successive components of a speech production or reception, the contrast might be considered as the difference between
(a) distinctly represented items which are assembled into a spatiotemporal whole, and
(b) an spatiotemporal assemblage simultaneously or nearly simultaneously given.
The reversion of institutionalized metaphor to non-metaphorical status would, then, require a kind of over-illustration, as if when we heard the expression Lord Privy Seal, our brains contrived successively images of Jesus, an outhouse, and a pinnipedial mammal.7.3
In Calvinist terms, the production of the spontaneously occurring metaphor may result from the competition of parts of spatiotemporal structures closely related to perceptual cues. Institutionalized metaphors are treated as a whole and are meant to stimulate structures that have a distributed nature, not so entrenched in perceptual cue, such as lingering memories. The difference in both is really a point of efficiency in which an institutionalized metaphor is somewhat cheap since the competition has already occurred somewhere outside.
The example of the Lord Privy Seal, well illustrates the kinds of dynamics involved in a competition of parts versus a context treated as a whole. The Lord Privy Seal is not really a metaphor; nevertheless it furnishes a convincing example of an expression which, while it is capable of being treated as an indivisible whole, has for its components elements having distinct, robust, and unrelated uses elsewhere. This is vividly true for metaphors and idiomatic constructions, but we suspect that in some considerable measure, it is crucially true for the whole of language.
It may be a minimal requirement that a model, such as Calvin's, distinguishes between institutionalized and spontaneously generated metaphor. However we maintain there is still an unexplained residuum of linguistic phenomena that require a model capable of representing populations of brains. In particular, linguistic constructions cannot become institutionalized other than through propagation in a population of language users. In fact it is plausible to suppose that it is through being learned as a unit that an institutionalized construction gains its characteristic independence from its spatiotemporal parts. A certain neural innocence on the part of post-inception generations of language users is required. Thus institutionalized metaphors cannot be the result of one brain's Darwinian competition. If they result from any such competition, we must assume that they are the result of a competition that involves many brains. Indeed, we may not need the details of Darwinian competitions within single brains for the purpose of modeling this kind of functionalization. This does not preclude the possibility that the mathematical description of a multi-brain model of institutionalization will be similar to that of a single-brain model, though the multi-brain model itself may be relatively coarse-grained.
It is significant that Calvin does not make this distinction: Central to his model, and certainly the main focus of its application, is the idea of a discrete linguistic subject and its brain. For this reason, Calvin's model does not have the means to explain how metaphors can become part of the common speech. The example of ``Catch 22'' suggests a kind of negotiated vocabulary for present perceptual cues between individuals. This suggestion helps erase an artificial boundary set by the concept of linguistic capacities within individuals and linguistic transaction that occur outside individuals. Institutionalized metaphors are negotiated, not in the sense of convention agreed upon by committee but much like neuron structures in which there is competition or energy exchange in neighbour interaction that propagates to an entire population. It may be that all vocabulary is negotiated and that negotiation is a coarse grained version of neural competition, both occurring nearly simultaneously and contributing to each participants.
Calvin's model suggests that a metaphor results from a competition between schema of literal spatiotemporal patterns. We suggest that metaphor may arise in speech as the outcome of a competition between schema that have been disarmed of some spatio-temporal effects, and their capacity to occasion highly specific expectations of perceptual cues. However, the competition between patterns is not resolved with one individual but requires interactions with neighbours, a behavior that is mirrored in neuron interaction.
This kind of competition cannot be supposed to be peculiar to metaphorical language unless this category is dramatically widened to include most vocabulary. Virtually all of the vocabulary of any natural language becomes institutionalized in the way that metaphor does by a gradual diminution in the capacity of a construction to occasion highly particular effects. This requires propagation through a multi-generational population of language users. Given that all linguistic beings have non-linguistic ancestors, it is plausible to infer that uses of all vocables represent novel exploitations of previously available devices. This in turn requires that linguistic devices be to some extent disarmed of their earlier capacities. Calvin's model suggests that all syntax is the result of successful propagation of certain patterns in a neuronal landscape. We suggest that this kind of competition extends to linguistic transactions between members of a linguistic species and includes not only metaphorical language but all vocables.