Yes, collocations and compounding are quite interesting. There's another kind of collocation that was studied in depth by Yakov Malkiel which he called "irreversible binomials". These are phrases consisting of two nouns (either substantive or adjective) connected by a conjunction which have become so fixed, that the nouns cannot be reversed without seeming strange: e.g., kith and kin, ham and eggs, thick and thin, etc.

See Y. Malkiel, "Studies in Irreversible Binomials" in Lingua VIII, 2 (May 1959); reprinted in his Essays on Linguistic Themes.