The Pragmatics of bas in Jordanian Arabic

The term bas 'enough' is used in JSA for different pragmatic meanings. In this paper, data were collected from 52 Jordanian university students in October 2019 at the University of Jordan by asking the participants when and why they use bas in their daily interactions. The study found that bas pragmatic meanings can be classified under 10 functions: threatening, exception, tempting and promising, condition, conjunction (with four meanings and, but, although, and only), objection, challenging, preferring, ending a conversation, and reasoning. The researchers support each category with illustrative examples along with their translations. The study also concludes that the term bas is functional in JSA. In addition, the term bas can be used syntactically in seven different tenses: simple present, simple past, simple future, present continuous, past continuous, past perfect, and future perfect.