In
theoretical linguistics, a distinction is made between
endocentric and
exocentric constructions. A
grammatical construction (e.g. a
phrase or compound word) is said to be
endocentric if it fulfills the same linguistic function as one of its parts, and
exocentric if it does not. The distinction reaches back at least to
Bloomfield's work of the 1930s. Such a distinction is possible only in
phrase structure grammars (constituency grammars), since in
dependency grammars all constructions are necessarily endocentric.
