Here's a breakdown of the key components:
* Words: The building blocks of a phrase.
* Meaning: The overall idea conveyed by the phrase.
* Syntactic function: The grammatical role the phrase plays in a sentence, such as a noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, etc.
For example:
* "The big, red ball" is a noun phrase. It's made up of the words "the," "big," "red," and "ball" and functions as a noun in a sentence.
* "Running very quickly" is a verb phrase. It's made up of the words "running" and "very quickly" and functions as the verb in a sentence.
Essentially, a phrase is a group of words that acts as a unit, contributing to the overall meaning and structure of a sentence.