[…] in grammar, we are exploring language not as sound or as writing but as wording [...] grammar (ʻlexicogrammarʼ) is the level of wording.
- Halliday (1985), a pag.19

It is an introduction to 'grammar' because in the functional tradition in linguistics the terms used for the levels, or ʻstrataʼ of a language – the stages in the coding process from meaning to expression – are semantics, grammar, and phonology.
- Halliday (1985), a pag.XIV

[...] grammar consists of syntax and vocabulary, plus – in languages which have word paradigms – also morphology.
- Halliday (1985), a pag.XIV

The grammar, then, is at once both a grammar of the system and a grammar of the text. We follow Saussure in his understanding of the relationship between the system of language and its instantiation in acts of speaking.
- Halliday (1985), a pag.XXII

[...] A grammar is an attempt to crack the code.
- Halliday (1985), a pag.XXXI

The grammar is the central processing unit of a language, where meanings are accepted from different metafunctional inputs and spliced together to form integrated outputs, or wordings. Without a grammar in the system, it would be impossible to mean more than one thing at once. In order to understand how language works, therefore, we have to engage with the grammar.
- Halliday (1985), a pag.XXXIV-XXXV

[...] grammar […] is a purely abstract level of coding with no direct input – output link with the outside world. We have to get at it through the meaning or through the expression.
- Halliday (1985), a pag.XXXV