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  1. Look at the girl dancing on the stage.
  2. Look at the dancing girl.
  3. They are a happily married couple.
  4. The Japanese are now a meat-eating people.

I understand that "dancing on the stage" in the first sentence is considered a clause (a reduced relative clause). What about the others? Could any one of them be considered a participle phrase rather than a clause (when used attributively, i.e. prepositively)?

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    What you describe as a participle phrase would often be described as a verb phrase. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language would regard dancing as either a verb or a VP depending on the meaning in (2). In (3) married is an adjective. In (4) meat-eating is a compound adjective. Don't have any authoritative references (as in page numbers etc), and nor am I certain, so this is just a comment.
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented May 7, 2022 at 0:25

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[1] Look at the girl dancing on the stage.

[2] Look at the dancing girl.

[3] They are a happily married couple.

[4] The Japanese are now a meat-eating people.

As you say, in [1] "dancing on the stage" is a clause: it qualifies as a clause because it has a subject-predicate structure, although the subject is understood rather than overt.

In [2] "dancing" is not a clause but a verb phrase. It belongs to the sub-type 'participle VP', so I suppose you could call it a participial phrase.

"Married" in [3] is not a verb but an adjective so "happily married" is an adjective phrase.

In [4] "meat-eating" is not a phrase at all, but a compound adjective.

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