Compounds verus word combinations

Compounds and word combinations can be easily confused but in fact, there are
four main criteria to differentiate between them.
The first is the graphic criteria. The graphic criteria means that we can rely on
the spelling of a word to discriminate between free word groups and compounds.
Components of a compound are usually jointly written or hyphenated, while words
in a word combination are always separately written.
For example, greenhouse is a compound. Meanwhile “green house ” written
seperately is a word combination.
However, sometimes components of compose are still written separately.
A few compound adjectives are made up of more than two words and they are
often written with hyphens when they stand in front of nouns. And without
hyphens when they are used as the completement of a link verb.
For example, There are many state-of-the-art equipments
The elevator is out of order.
The second is phonetic criteria. Most of compounds have a stress on the first
syllable while each word in word combination has a stress of its own.
For example ‘slowcoach (compound)
‘slow ‘coach (word combination)
Compound adj may have stress on both components as word combinations.
‘easy’going, ‘grey-‘green, ‘good-‘looking,…
The third is semantic criteria. A compounexp expressed only one concept
despite the fact that it consists of two or more words, while a word combination
expresses two or more concepts depending on the number of words in the word
combination.
For example, tallboy denotes a piece of furniture
Meanwhile “tall boy” written seperately denotes a person.
The last one is syntactic and morphological criteria. This criteria means that we
can rely on the grammatical arrangement and the form of a word to discriminate
between word combinations and compounds.
A compound is treated as a complete unity indivisible. Each compound belongs to
one certain part of speech and is subject to the grammatical changes of that part of
speech. No extra word can be added between them.
In contrast, each word in word combination is an independent unit belonging to a
certain part of speech and has all the grammatical changes that part of speech. extra
words can be added between them.
For example, tallboy  tallboys tallboy’s  tallboys’
Tall boy  taller boy(s), tallish boy(s)  tall handsome boy(s)