Syntax Analysis:
Syntax analysis is the second phase of the compiler, also known as parsing. It analyzes the syntactical structure of the source code and checks whether it adheres to the grammar rules of the programming language. This phase ensures that the code is well-formed and forms a parse tree or an abstract syntax tree (AST) for further processing.

Lexical Analysis:
Lexical analysis is the first phase of the compiler. It takes the source code as input and breaks it into a sequence of tokens or lexemes. These lexemes are the smallest meaningful units of the programming language, such as keywords, identifiers, operators, literals, etc. The lexical analyzer removes unnecessary characters like whitespace and comments and generates a token stream that is passed to the next phase.

Intermediate Code Generation:
Intermediate code generation is a phase of the compiler that converts the high-level source code into a low-level intermediate representation. This intermediate code is often platform-independent and serves as an intermediate step between the source code and the target machine code.

Machine Independent Phase:
A machine-independent phase of the compiler refers to a phase that does not depend on the specific characteristics of the target machine. It focuses on analyzing and transforming the source code into an intermediate representation that is independent of the target machine's architecture.

Explanation:
Among the given options, syntax analysis (option A) is the machine-independent phase of the compiler. It analyzes the structure of the source code based on the language's grammar rules, without considering the specifics of the target machine. The output of this phase, the parse tree or AST, is a representation of the code's structure and is used for subsequent phases such as semantic analysis and code generation.

Lexical analysis (option C) is the first phase of the compiler and is also machine-independent. It deals with tokenizing the source code and does not rely on the target machine.

Intermediate code generation (option B) is not machine-independent as it involves generating code that represents the computation in a form closer to the target machine. The intermediate code is eventually translated into the target machine code.

Therefore, the correct answer is option A - Syntax Analysis.