Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 480):
Jill says something; this is a verbal event. To represent it, I use a ‘verbal’ clause Jill said, plus a quote of her verbal act ‘It’s raining’. The two have equal status (paratactic), because both are wordings. That is to say, both my locution Jill said and Jill’s locution it’s raining are lexicogrammatical phenomena.