From the Internet:
Collocation

(Definitions)

Collocation is the relationship between two words or groups of words that often go together and form a common expression. If the expression is heard often, the words become 'glued' together in our minds. 'Crystal clear', 'middle management' 'nuclear family' and 'cosmetic surgery' are examples of collocated pairs of words. Some words are often found together because they make up a compound noun, for example 'riding boots' or 'motor cyclist'.

And this is a very, very interesting point of language. It makes it very hard at times to parse sentences--or even to explain how sentences should be parsed--because two words really function as one, which is difficult for some students to grasp.

'Crystal clear' having been collocated, really should function as a single word, as does the compound noun 'riding boots' or even, more understandable, 'mountain lion.' In diagramming a sentence, you wouldn't show lion as a noun and mountain as a modifier because the two words 'mountain lion' behave as one.

I wonder whether this is true for these collocated pairs, such as 'crystal clear'? Would 'crystal clear' function as one adjective if you were to diagram it in a sentence? Based on what I know about compound nouns, I would guess, yes. Does anyone here know exactly how these collocated pairs should be correctly diagrammed in sentences?

Anyway, thanks, wwh. Again, very interesting.

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.

Oh, many thanks, jheem. Taking an educated guess, I would expect that these collocated terms must be diagrammed as one unit and not with modifiers separated.

And these 'irreversible binomials' made me laugh because it is such a wonderful mouthful! This will be a terrifically enjoyable term to drop upon someone in my English department soon, not to mention my own students. It sounds so wonderfully mathematical! But I am honest. After I see a jaw or two drop, I'll definitely credit you and AWAD with this new information!

Irreversibly binomially yours,
WW

I do not like green eggs and ham...

do not like

And now we know why!

BTW, I went for years thinking that it was only the eggs that were green. (The book was after my time)

You're welcome, dub-dub. Not sure how many English professors it takes to reverse a binomial, and some of their math colleagues may take issue with hijacking one of their terms, but it should be fun and besides the mouthfullness of the moniker most folks quickly understand what you're talking about. The Indian (Sanskrit) Grammarians studied compounds in depth, and I've always loved their technical terms for two different kinds of compounds: dvandva 'pair, couple' (called by Whitney copulative compounds, i.e., two words smashed together that would normally be connected by a conjunction) and bahuvrihi '(possessing) much rice' (or possessive compounds). I was surprised to see that bahuvrihi is listed in the A-H. The example they give is high-fiber diet, with high-fiber being a bahuvrihi compound, as in a diet possessing (or consisting) of high fiber.

Let's list what we have so far:

compound words (e.g., mountain lion, riding boot, arctic fox or Arctic fox, depending upon your dictionary)

collocated terms (e.g., crystal clear, kick the bucket, and nuclear family)

irreversible binomials (e.g., ham and eggs, love and marriage, agony and ecstasy)

dvandva or copulative compounds (e.g., pair, newlyweds (?--would plurality discount this one), maybe trio and similar words, unless the members need to be more distinct)

bahuvrihi or possessive compounds (e.g., high-fiber).

Can you give us some other examples of these last two compounds so we can detect a pattern? Do the possessive compounds have to be hyphenated, for example? Since the copulative compound is a simple word, such as pair, could the possessive compound also be a simple word such as bushel?

I'm trying to find a good article online, but haven't found one yet.

Here's something on the possessive compounds from the Net that further mystifies me:

Possessive compounds, also called exocentric compounds are compounds which lack a head element and resemble predicate - argument structures5. hunchback, pickpocket, lazybones, cut-throat, redskin

Exocentric compounds denote some feature of the entity which is
denoted by the compound: A redskin is so called because of his redskin; it does not denote a type of skin but a type of person / potato etc.who / which has a red skin.

Ah! So something has been left out here. The redskin (potato) possesses, so to speak, red skin, but we're not talking about the skin, per se, of the potato. And the same would go for the Native American.

The lazy-bones refers not to the bones of the person so much as to the person who possesses those figurative lazy bones.

Interesting. Jaheem, you have given me my day's work, I think, on this snow/ice day off from school!

Still talking to myself, but this is quite interesting and complex.

Here on one site I learn that regular old run-of-the-mill compound words are called:

Root or Primary compounds

The site I visited used houseboat as an example. What you see is what you get, and you don't have to figure out anything much as you would with riding boot[, for example or redskin.

And then there are, too, synthetic compounds that had to do with position of verbals in what was called the 'head' of the compound (e.g., driver in 'truck driver,' the head usually being the last word in the compound, according to the site information).

Anyway, here's the URL. There's a lot to read there that is fun decoding:

http://santana.uni-muenster.de/Seminars/MorphologyHS_WS02/transparencies/morphologie11b.pdf

Can you give us some other examples of these last two compounds so we can detect a pattern? Do the possessive compounds have to be hyphenated, for example? Since the copulative compound is a simple word, such as pair, could the possessive compound also be a simple word such as bushel?

I'm at work now, so am away from my reference library, but an example of dvandva would be: Ramasitau. Rama is one of the incarnations of Vishnu, and the eponymous hero of the Ramayana. His wife's name is Sita. Ramasitau means in Sanskrit Rama and Sita (together as husband and wife). An aside is that the ending -au is the dual (not plural) nominative. I can't think of an English example, but in Sanskrit, you can put two nouns together into a compound word. No 'and' or 'or' conjunction necessary. Bahuvrihi is an example of itself. It can be used as an adjective meaning 'possessing a lot of rice' hence rich. You could say something like Jheem bahuvrihi meaning Jheem who possesses a lot of rice. Not that Jheem is a noun and bahuvrihi is an compound adjective in this example.

I was saying that most collocations are compounds. Whether the compound has a space like crystal clear, a hyphen like high-fiber, or nothing like honeymoon. (I'd argue that that's just an orthographic convention in English.) And dvandva and bahuvrihi are just linguistic terms that Indian grammarians came up with, but which linguists still use for languages other than Sanskrit.

Hope this helps.

the 'head' of the compound (e.g., driver in 'truck driver,' the head usually being the last word in the compound

The head of a phrase usually determines what the syntactic category of the phrase as a whole will be. So, truck driver can simply be replaced by a noun: The truck driver swerved to miss the jackrabbit. / The woman swerved to miss the jackrabbit.

There's also a problem with parsing compunds that is well known and studied. Ancient history teacher. Does it mean a teacher of ancient history or an ancient teacher of history?

Exocentric compounds are what I was calling bahuvrihi.

I always understood that collocation was the force that made some combinations idiomatic and not others. For example, you might break off your engagement, rather than cancel it or withdraw from it, or you might spend too much time on AWAD rather than use too much time on AWAD.

Bingley