摘要：Note that the “contraction” in (2) is not phonologically conditioned because it is obligatory evenwhen nan is not followed by a coronal consonant.This obligatory short form nan in (2), however, has semantics distinct from nani. The latterrefers to a concrete thing or an abstract property/concept etc., but the former exclusively refers tonumber. In all the examples in (2), nan appears in exactly the same position as numerals: beforenumeral classifiers (2a), before ordinal nouns (2b), and before numerical bases (as a multiplicand)(2c). It can be replaced with a numeral (e.g. go ‘five’) or another wh-element for amount (e.g. iku‘how many’).
