Preferred list ordering [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate:
What are the principles that make certain lists sound euphonious?
Name for a type of idiom with two things joined (like “raining cats and dogs”, “bread and butter”)

Is there a word to describe a preferred order in which we describe a list of items (usually two items)?

The following examples illustrate my question better:

"Mom and Dad" ("Dad and Mom" is equally correct but sounds wrong)

"Big And Tall" (In AmE/Culture, this refers to a clothing retailer for larger people; It's never a "Tall And Big" store)

"Food And Drink"

"Black and Blue", "Black and White" (these may just be expressions versus being lists)

There are certainly others but I can't think of them now.

Solution 1:

There's a very interesting classic treatment of this phenomenon, using both phonology and semantics, in

• Cooper, William E. and Haj Ross. 1975. "World Order", in Grossman, Robin E., L. James San, and Timothy J. Vance, eds. Papers from the Parasession on Functionalism, April 17th, 1975, Chicago Linguistic Society.

In particular, Cooper and Ross use the term freezes for cases like bigger and better, fore and aft, kit and caboodle where "the ordering of the two conjuncts is rigidly fixed in normal speech."

Solution 2:

A very interesting point which Steven Pinker mentions in 'The Language Instinct' is that where one element in such pairs has a high, front vowel and the other has a low, back vowel, the former always precedes the latter. It's always ping-pong, chit-chat, dribs and drabs, spick and span and so on and never the other way round.