(26 September 1999)
Will Quale defines a category of phrases that he calls "And Phrases." (Actually, he calls them "& phrases," but for clarity I've changed the term a little. I've retained his practice of writing the phrases themselves with ampersands, however, as I'm rather fond of ampersands.) An And Phrase is a phrase of the form "A & B" in which most speakers would consider the phrase "B & A" to be backwards. For instance, "cap & gown" is an ordinary-sounding phrase, but if someone said "gown & cap" it would probably sound wrong. (Not ungrammatical; "I picked my gown and cap up off the floor" is a perfectly good sentence. But the phrase by itself, or in common contexts where the two words appear together, definitely has a specific usual order.)
Other And Phrases suggested by Will, with a couple of mine thrown in:
cats & dogs
apples & oranges
fruits & vegetables
salt & pepper
arms & legs (also note "an arm & a leg")
hands & feet
fingers & toes
north & south
east & west
tooth & nail
hammer & tongs
beck & call
sixes & sevens
to & fro
good & evil
war & peace
suit & tie
love & marriage
horse & cart
cars & trucks
field & stream
hunting & fishing
Interestingly, there's some disagreement about the order of some And Phrases. Will suggested "socks & shoes," but "shoes & socks" sounds much more natural to me. And various people have disagreed about a couple of the others mentioned above.
I suspect there are a variety of factors operating in the ordering of noun
phrases. Some are parts of common phrases
"cats
& dogs" might not be so strongly ordered if not for the phrase "raining
cats & dogs." Others are fixed phrases that have been repeated so often
that they become standard: perhaps "cowboys & Indians" and "cops
& robbers" weren't such strongly ordered phrases before decades of
repetition. Semantics may be involved, from societal gender bias ("king
& queen") to hierarchies of size, importance, chronology, or other
categories. And I suspect that rhythm plays a part as well: patterns of alternating
stressed and unstressed syllables generally tend to please the ear, at least
the ear of the native speaker of English (or at least the ear of this particular
native speaker), more than multiple consecutive unstressed syllables. Since
English nouns often have primary stress on their initial syllables, an And Phrase
containing a one-syllable noun and a two-syllable noun may be more likely to
start with the one-syllable noun, producing the double trochee stress pattern
of "salt and pepper" rather than " pepper
and salt," which places two unstressed syllables together. (Yes,
that makes the first three syllables a dactyl. But I suspect dactyls seem slightly
less natural to most English-speaking ears than strings of alternating stresses.)
But that doesn't account for ordering of two one-syllable words in an And Phrase.
Steven Pinker has suggested, if I remember right, that differences in vowel
sounds account for ordering of vowels in nonsense words and onomatopoetic sound-wordsin
flip-flop, pitter-patter, and so on, the first stressed vowel
is always more toward the front of the mouth (such as /I/, /i/, or /e/) and
the second stressed vowel is always more toward the back of the mouth (such
as /u/, /U/, or /A/). But in several of Will's And Phrases the first vowel is
further back than the second, so it seems unlikely that Pinker's pattern applies
to And Phrases.
Will points out some other interesting things about And Phrases. For instance, there are chains:
bread & wine
wine & cheese
cheese & crackers
Also, And Phrases can be names as well as ordinary nouns. In particular, couples are often referred to in phrases much like And Phrases: "Jack & Jill" sounds more natural than "Jill & Jack." Again this particular example may be due largely to the number of times we've heard the more common phrase. But often real-life couples are commonly referred to in a particular order. Some have suggested that the member of the couple you know better is likely to be mentioned first; others, that the more outgoing or talkative member is likely to come first; others, that (in male/female couples) the male is likely to be mentioned first. I'm inclined to think that stress patterns (in the phonological rather than the psychological sense) also have something to do with the ordering. (The And Phrase nature of pairs of names isn't limited to romantic couples, of course; somehow Ted & Bill's Excellent Adventure doesn't have the same ring to it, and Louise & Thelma just sounds wrong.) My guess is that ordering of a couple's name is probably some combination of several of those factors, plus sheer individual idiosyncracies. Further research is indicated.
For a pronunciation guide, see column k.