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 Janet eats cakes daily.

(This sentence has no phrases. All of the parts of the sentence are single words.)

 My cousin Janet eats cakes daily.

(Now we have a phrase. It's a three-word phrase functioning as the subject of this
sentence. Note that the phrase itself does not contain its own subject and verb.)

 My cousin Janet eats cakes during the week.

(We've added another phrase. This one also has three words, but it is functioning as
an adverb.)

 My cousin Janet was eating cakes during the week.

(We've added another phrase. This one has two words. It is a multi-word verb.)

 My cousin Janet was eating cream cakes from the bakery during the week.
(We've added another phrase. This one has five words. It is functioning as a direct object in

this sentence.)The examples above prove that phrases function as one single unit within a
sentence. But, let's look a little closer.

The term "cream cakes from the bakery" has its own embedded phrase ("from the bakery").
This is a prepositional phrase describing the "cream cakes." So, it's possible to have a

phrase within a phrase. It's common in fact. There's more. The words "was eating cream
cakes from the bakery during the week" is also classified a phrase. It's called a verb phrase.
(A verb phrase consists of a verb and all its modifiers. Those modifiers could also be phrases,
as they are in this example.