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.
The pattern
nu ta lopia ORD one child (the first child) nu wi philo ORD two day (the second day) nu ta shao nophi ORD one three-group story (the third 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.
Dating 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. (The third 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.
Position 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. (The child is in the second position.)
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 talk about, reach for noa. Ranks, it is worth saying, are places in lines, not places above people: Phi's refusals (canon) see to it that ordering things never becomes ordering persons.
Ordinals 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 first guest — position, then nature, then person)
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.
Drill: 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 (nu ta shao wi nophi? No, scenes are events, but scene here is nophi, 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.