A grammatical construction (like a phrase) is said to be endocentric if it fulfils the same linguistic function as one of its parts, and exocentric if it does not.
An endocentric construction consists of an mandatory head and one or more dependents, whose presence serves to modify the meaning of the head
e.g.
- verb (head) and its adverb (dependent)
- running fast
- noun (head) and its adjective (dependent)
- a big house
without the dependent, it still would make sense
An exocentric construction consists of two or more parts, whereby the one or the other of the parts cannot be viewed as providing the bulk of the semantic content of the whole
without the dependents, it would not make sense
e.g.
- subject verb object
- Hannibal destroyed Rome