There's this one paper published by the Chicago Linguistic Society in 1975 that I found years ago and really enjoy, World Order: http://websites.umich.edu/~jlawler/haj/worldorder.pdf

It describes the concept of irreversible #binomials (link) in #linguistics: words or #morphemes that come together and (often) have fixed positions. Things like:

• body and soul
• back and forth
• in and out
• ladies and gentlemen
• head and shoulders
• northwest
• north-south
• this and that
• good and evil

Which when reversed don't really work (usually):

• soul and body
• forth and back
• out and in
• gentlemen and ladies
• shoulders and head
• westnorth
• south-north
• that and this
• evil and good

Because certain cultural values determine #WordOrder: things that are close or high above, sex, age, friendliness, agentivity, living beings, divine beings, among many other things.

It's very interesting once you stop for a moment and think about it. And it differs slightly according to each language too. ​