A verb phrase is a phrase whose head (i.e. most important) word is a verb. It includes any dependents such as modifiers, complements, etc. It functions as the head of a clause and represents the 'predicate', i.e. what is said about the subject. For example, in the sentence "Some people complained about the service", "people" is the subject and "complained about the service" is the predicate, i.e.