There isn't an adverbial phrase.

Traditionally, a preposition phrase like "At the Bali restaurant" would be considered to be a locative adverbial phrase modifying he verb "eat" because it says where you can eat exotic food.

But the term 'adverbial phrase' represents a confusion of functions and categories. "At the garden" belongs to the category 'preposition phrase', and it has the function of adjunct. It is quite wrong to call it an 'adverbial phrase'.

Certainly adjunct does cover what many people call adverbials. I very much dislike the latter term. I think it is very unsatisfactory to have a function term that is morphologically derived from a category term. Adverb is a word category, and adverb phrase (a phrase headed by an adverb) the corresponding phrase category. Adverbial is a function and may be realised by an AdvP (He spoke quickly), a PP (He spoke with enthusiasm), an NP (He’s speaking this evening). AdvPs do not always function as adjuncts: they may function as modifier in AdjPs (It was quite amazingly expensive), etc. Adverbial phrase is quite often used for any phrase functioning as adverbial and hence likely to be confused with adverb phrase.

See what I mean?

PaulM

I am going to be very interested in reading Victor's reply.

Read more about adverbial phrases here.

Sorry, GM is quite wrong when it says:

'Adverbial phrase (or adverb phrase) is the term for two or more words which play the role of an adverb ...'

An adverbial phrase and an adverb phrase are quite different. As I said before, adverbial is a function, and can be realised by several categories of phrase such as a PP ("He spoke with enthusiasm"), an AdvP ("He spoke quickly") and so on.

An adverb phrase, by contrast, is a phrase that has an adverb as head. Here are two adverb phrases:

1. "Quite separately from this issue". (the adverb "separately" is head)
2. "Happily for the boys". (the adverb "happily" is head)

It's extremely important for students to grasp this difference.

PaulM

Yes, agree. The page has been edited to make it safer.

An adverb phrase is a type of adverbial phrase though, so "quite different" is a bit strong.

"It's extremely important for students to grasp this difference."

There's essential information necessary for grasping the English language…

…and there's being pedantic.