Example sentences of "could not have [vb pp] [prep] [det] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | In the meantime , oxygen could not have accumulated at this early stage ( without biological help ) because it would absorb the same ultraviolet rays . |
| 2 | I could not have conceived of any circumstances in which it would have been sensible for any particular political group to murder Gaitskell , and the likelihood that it was murder — in such an immensely complicated fashion — seemed to me at first blush fanciful and absurd . |
| 3 | I stress ‘ of the kind yielding infinite generative capacity ’ because it is the peculiar combinatorial potency of expressions in natural language which , it seems to me , could not have emerged by any evolutionary mechanism unless the users of the system were capable of the sort of second-order intentional states involved in the Gricean mechanism . |
| 4 | When times were good , men married earlier and some were able to marry who otherwise could not have married at all — and vice versa . |
| 5 | Animals such as mussels would not be spread so liberally around the world — indeed they could not have evolved at all — unless they had a phase as mobile plankton . |
| 6 | I mean , surely the waifs and orphans , not to mention the bona fide seedling sons and daughters , could not have sprung into these young oaks in such a relatively short space of time ? |
| 7 | He was plainly suffering because he had denied Sheila her chance of university but he could not have acted in any other way , perhaps through race fear of the poorhouse or plain temperament . |
| 8 | The relevant circumstances were that : ( i ) the limitation terms had nut been negotiated by any representative body ; ( ii ) the buyers could not have discovered the error ( i. e. that the wrong seed had been delivered ) until after the crop was sown , whereas the sellers were in a position to have known ; ( iii ) the buyers could not reasonably have been expected to cover such a risk ( i.e. of crop failure ) by insurance whereas it was possible for seedsmen to cover their liability by insurance at a modest premium which would not have put up the cost of seeds by very much ; ( iv ) the error could not have occurred without some negligence on the part of the sellers . |
| 9 | It is a pity that she could not have elaborated on several points , and provided a fuller answer to the question she herself raises on p. 101 : " When is it … perfectly appropriate to tell jokes and play with words ? " |