2.1 A GRAMMAR for locality names. A GRAMMAR consists in 1) the PS-RULES, describing how the locality name hierarchy is constituted, 2) SS-RULES, describing how the locality name pieces are classified, and 3) the LEXICON.
The designation of a locality in genealogy is customarly given by means of a whole series of locality names, each one normally separated from the next with a comma.
| (1) | of Provo, Utah, Utah | |
| (2) | Provo, Utah | |
| (3) | Wellsville, Cache, Utah | |
| (4) | Wellsville Utah | |
| (5) | Wellsville, Cache, Utah Territory | |
| (6) | Park City, Summit County, Utah | |
| (7) | Mount Pleasant, Sanpete, Utah | |
| (8) | Mount Carmel Junction, Kane, Utah | |
| (9) | Navajo Mountain Trading Post, San Juan, Utah |
The locality name heirarchy consists of nested localities, the most specific place given first and the most general last. In the Oriental cultures the customary order is just the opposite. Notice too, as in the first example, the hierarchy may be introduced with a word like of or near to show a certain amount of uncertainty in relating that particular place to the event it is meant to locate.
The rule is read and interpreted as follows: “A locality name hierarchy consists of at least one locality name phrase possibly introduced with an approximative expression and possibly followed by one or more locality name phrases, each possibly separated from the others using a boundary.”
The second rule gives the various options in the way the elements of a locality name phrase are arranged. The examples in (5) and (6) include a locality type, such as, territory, county, which was originally applied to distinguish its adminstrative jurisdiction, but has become an integral part of the name of the populated place. The locality name phrase may be simply a locality phrase by itself (defined later in rule [LPS5]). Certainly, the single word names would belong here, Provo, Utah, Wellsville, Cache, in some of the examples above. In example (6) the type name is part of the locality type phrase as defined in rule [LPS3]. In example (7) there is a type name Mount that comes before the root name so I have called it an inverted locality phrase, which will be defined further in rule [LPS4]. The examples in (8) and (9) show why it makes sense to allow for a locality name phrase to contain two type names.
In phrase structure rule [LPS1] the only terminal constituents are the categories of approximative and boundary. The approximative is a preposition and is classified as either designating a nearby place or a place of origin. The boundary is a single character, either the comma or the blank space. The segment structure rules giving the classes for these particles follow.
