A study of the principles underlying 'freezes', i.e. combinations of words with a fixed order (e.g. 'bigger and better' and not 'better and bigger'). C. and R. show that (i) the semantic reasons for the given order are more important than the phonological ones, (ii) there are functional constraints such as 'ease of processing' for speech perception, and (iii) the constraints are related to man's view of himself in the world.