ABSTRACT
Term introduced by Bloomfield (1933) referring to a syntactic construction which belongs to the same form class/category (i.e. shows the same distribution) as one or more of its constituents. Thus fresh fruit can be replaced by fruit because both can occur as X in the environment He is buying X. Fruit is considered the nucleus (or head, center) and the adjective fresh a satellite ( modifier). On the difference between these terms, see exocentric construction. Bloomfield differentiates between co-ordinate and subordinate endocentric constructions: when two or more immediate constituents belong to the same form class as the entire expression, he speaks of co-ordinate (also: serial) endocentric constructions as in the co-ordination of John and Mary. If only one of several elements belongs to the same form class as the whole expression, then it is a subordinate (also: attributive) endocentric construction: new books. These distinctions also define important dependency relations, upon which dependency grammar and categorial grammar systematically build. ( also complementation and modification).
