Example sentences of "a [adj] [noun] have be [v-ing] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | On the seminary hill a strange edifice had been constructing over the last previous months . |
| 2 | Specialised studies of sex as a social experience have been appearing for almost a hundred years , since at least the time of the great pioneering sexologists and anthropologists of the late nineteenth century ; and what appeared then were works which have been profoundly influential , not only in describing but in constructing and delineating the areas to be discussed . |
| 3 | For most , there is an enduring search for bonds of love and loyalty , and other research showed that four out of five teenagers involved in a sexual relationship had been going out with their partner for six months or more . |
| 4 | Something approaching a personal crisis had been building up since Nietzsche 's return from the unforgettable distress of war . |
| 5 | In the last few weeks , in the last few days especially , a suppressed excitement had been growing . |
| 6 | The victim of a vicious assault has been talking about the attack which left him unconscious and with a broken jaw . |
| 7 | Afterwards , he remembered that Lots Road power station had smoked whitely into a grey sky , and that along the Embankment a cold wind had been whipping off the river , driving spread-eagled pages from an old newspaper before it and wrapping one of them round the legs of a tall , frail man in a tweed overcoat . |
| 8 | But unknown to the gunman , a little boy had been stealing a ride on the bar under the carriage , and he saw it all . |
| 9 | It 's like a little girl has been playing with her mother 's scissors , and she sat in front of the mirror wondering what her mother 's going to say , and whether if she snips a little more it 'll be OK . |
| 10 | that a major consultation has been going on in one is reminded of the earlier discussion about er St Albans , twelve thousand questionnaires have been sent out and there |
| 11 | Therefore the proportion of households headed by a married couple has been decreasing through time — it was 74 per cent in 1971 , 70 per cent in 1981 , and is expected to be only about 55 per cent in 2001 in England and Wales ( Department of the Environment , 1986a ) . |
| 12 | A terrible knowledge had been swelling slowly in the Padre 's mind , like a sweet , poisonous fruit , which for a long time he had not dared to taste . |
| 13 | The human rights organization Amnesty International claimed in a report published on Jan. 10 that torture and summary executions by the Senegalese security forces were becoming more common in the southern region of Casamance , where a separatist movement had been intensifying its armed struggle since mid-1990 [ see pp. 37799-800 ] . |
| 14 | But in recent decades the sea walls built behind the marshes as a secondary defence have been blocking their retreat and have squeezed them . |
| 15 | There were two versions of the film , in the violent version a small boy had been playing outside the bank and was shot in the face as the robbers made their getaway . |
| 16 | A congressional committee has been inquiring into why Augusto Pinochet junior , who calls himself an international arms adviser , received cheques worth nearly $3m from the army , apparently for his share in a rifle factory , and whether the old general knew his son stood to benefit . |
| 17 | Thus a woman on a bus describing the way a mutual friend has been behaving , getting out of bed too soon after an operation , concludes her turn in the conversation by saying |
| 18 | And so quite a big job has been cutting reeds back around the islands and the banks , and also we 've had what they call blooms of blanketweed , not so much recently but , apparently it 's more common with new ponds and I had a tremendous bloom of blanketweed the first year after I made it . |
| 19 | ‘ Stand-to ’ , and a steady drizzle has been falling since 3 a.m . |
| 20 | My hon. Friend may remember that , in 1980 , a quarter of a million people had been waiting for more than two months for telephones to be connected . |
| 21 | Less innocent were the scandals such as that exposed in 1916 of Hospital 27 , where a crooked doctor had been providing bogus discharges from the army at several thousand francs a time . |
| 22 | In recent years , a quiet revolution has been taking place as technical changes and new marketing methods for a vast range of home products have increased consumer choice and introduced alternative ways of home building . |
| 23 | A QUIET revolt has been taking place in courtrooms across America . |
| 24 | Indeed , insiders suggest that Motorola is now actively encouraging existing and potential 88000 users to start looking at PowerPC : talk of a NeXT portable has been doing the rounds . |
| 25 | The number of people who die from the habit is increasing every year , and a special conference has been looking at ways of tackling the problem . |
| 26 | What has frankly surprised me about the last decade is the way in which social scientists who make no claim to a Christian profession have been talking openly about the relevance of religious values to our current economic problems in the Western world . |
| 27 | An old man has been playing the guitar , but he has left off playing to listen to a young shepherd piping . |
| 28 | The movement into private care has been accentuated by tight control of local authority expenditure at a time when numbers of people have been ‘ deinstitutionalised ’ from psychiatric and psycho-geriatric units , and when people from an ageing population have been seeking residential care for the first time . |
| 29 | And er an interesting thing had been coming to our house She comes goes to the same church . |
| 30 | And what would an ordinary person have been earning at Helliwells ? |