as with the particle verbs, the combinations form catenae (but not constituents) in simple declarative sentences: The verb and the preposition that it demands form a single meaning-bearing unit, whereby this unit is a catena. These meaning-bearing units can thus be stored as catenae in the mental lexicon of speakers. As catenae, they are concrete units of syntax. The final type of collocations produced here to illustrate catenae is the complex preposition, e.g. because of, due to, inside of, in spite of, out of, outside of, etc. The intonation pattern for these prepositions suggests that orthographic conventions are correct in writing them as two (or more) words. This situation, however, might be viewed as a problem, since it is not clear that the two words each time can be viewed as forming a constituent. In this regard, they do of course qualify as a catena, e.g. The collocations illustrated in this section have focused mainly on prepositions and particles and they are therefore just a small selection of meaning-bearing collocations. They are, however, quite suggestive. It seems likely that all meaning-bearing collocations are stored as catenae in the mental lexicon of language users. Proper idioms Full idioms are the canonical cases of non-compositional meaning. The fixed words of idioms do not bear their productive meaning, e.g. take it on the chin. Someone who "takes it on the chin" does not actually experience any physical contact to their chin, which means that chin does not have its normal productive meaning and must hence be part of a greater collocation. This greater collocation is the idiom, which consists of five words in this case. While the idiom take it on the chin can be stored as a VP constituent (and is therefore not a problem for constituent-based theories), there are many idioms that clearly cannot be stored as constituents. These idioms are a problem for constituent-based theories precisely because they do not qualify as constituents. However, they do of course qualify as catenae. The discussion here focuses on these idioms since they illustrate particularly well the value of the catena concept. Many idioms in English consist of a verb and a noun (and more), whereby the noun takes a possessor that co-indexed with the subject and will thus vary with subject. These idioms are stored as catenae but clearly not as constituents, e.g. Similar idioms have a possessor that is freer insofar