Example sentences of "can [adv] have be a [noun sg] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Now , I do n't think we know what was the exact Sterling equivalent of the fall in our reserves during the last financial year , but it can only have been a minority of that total of £1and1/2 ; billion of public expenditure which was met neither by the product of taxation nor by borrowing from the public . |
| 2 | The South Saxons whose numbers we shall never know with any accuracy , built up a complex Wealden farming system , backed by a communication network that can only have been an extension of the lesser economic roads of the Romano-Britons . |
| 3 | For my part , there can hardly have been a day when I did not think of Eliot , when his growing prestige was not a source of immense satisfaction and pride to me , and when personal news about him , however brief , was more than welcome at such distance than propinquity without meeting would have been . |
| 4 | Nothing very dramatic here , then , but at least he was in the buying and selling game , not a wage slave , and there can hardly have been a time when it was not easier to sell the odd pork chop or two than it was to convince an employer that he ought to buy your skills as a craftsman . |
| 5 | Certainly he never made any secret of his Conservative past , having twice stood unsuccessfully for parliament among the miners of County Durham , where his air of a slightly lost rural dean can hardly have been an asset . |
| 6 | There can never have been a field of research in which the likelihood that people would make similar discoveries almost simultaneously has been as great . |