Part 4
Position (nu)
Quantity says how many; position says which one. The Slot 2 particle nu (ORD) converts any number to a position, standing before it exactly where modifier-first predicts: announce position-ness, then the number, then the thing.
01The pattern
nu ta lopia
ORD one child
nu wi philo
ORD two day
nu ta shao nophi
ORD one three-group story
The number inside is ordinary ternary: nu ta shao is third because ta shao is three. Everything Part 2 built transfers: nu wi phoi ta is nineteenth, if a nineteenth ever matters, and the length of saying it is the language's gentle opinion about whether it does. Exact ordinals share the cardinal range through 242; larger exact positions remain source material outside the Phi passage.
02Dating the days
The journal practice (manual ch23) dates entries ordinally, and it is the most natural ordinal drill there is:
nu ta shao philo.
ORD one three-group day.
A week of journal dates, aloud: nu ta philo. nu wi philo. nu ta shao philo. nu ta shao ta philo. nu ta shao wi philo. nu wi shao philo. nu wi shao ta philo. First day through seventh. Then remember the manual's counsel: date by count when the count matters, and by the day's own nature when it does not: pheralu philo, a rain-day, is also a date.
03Position as a thing: noa
When position itself is the topic (not a marker on a noun but the subject of discussion) the content word noa (position) serves compositionally:
lopia mua wi noa nai.
child LOC two position be.
nu marks; noa names. The working distinction: if English wants second X, reach for nu; if it wants the second position as a place or rank to discuss, reach for noa. A rank in Phi is a place in a line; who set the line, and what standing in it costs, are the questions the word leaves open.
04Ordinals and classifiers together
Both can appear, each doing its own announcing, in their own slots:
nu ta himo phemi
ORD one HUM.CLF guest
The stack reads outward-in, like everything in Phi: which one, what kind, who. Rare in speech, precise when wanted: the layered form belongs to formal welcome and careful record, and the bare nu ta phemi covers the ordinary day.
05Drill: order the story
The velveteen story runs in eighteen scenes; the journal runs in dated days; the market runs in stalls. Produce, aloud: the fifth scene (an event, or a stretch of story? decide and defend), the sixth day, the second trader, the eighth egg, the first storm of the year. Answers and the classifier reasoning in Part 9: the egg and the storm are the instructive two.