Example sentences of "could [adv] [vb infin] [vb pp] [conj] [art] " in BNC.
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| 1 | That could only have happened if the Left did not know what was going on , and it could only have not known what was going on if it was being tricked by one of its own . |
| 2 | According to the conventional wisdom , fusion required great heat and hence could only have happened when the Earth was being formed ; however , if the Earth is five billion years old , all the helium would by now have risen away , yet it was there in amounts suggesting that it had appeared in the atmosphere only recently . |
| 3 | When he and others advocated extra divisions in the Edwardian period they could not have foreseen that the formation of a Third Division in 1920 would create an extra demand for players of talent at a time when a large part of the male population had been wiped out in a world war . |
| 4 | The third parties could not have assumed that the Council was acting on behalf of member States . |
| 5 | In addition to the non-literary sources cited above , there is rather strong evidence in Shakespeare and Marlowe — especially in puns of the type air , heir , hair — that [ h ] -dropping was salient in the speech community : clearly , the puns could not have worked if the ‘ groundlings ’ had not recognized them ( see , for example , Comedy of Errors , III.ii.122–3 ; Dido and Aeneas , I.i.10 ) . |
| 6 | They could not have told when the music tightened its hold and began its pull , but to Taliesin , afterwards , it was as if there was a moment when he knew that he was able to resist , and then another moment when he had surrendered completely . |
| 7 | Phoebe , in fairness , could not have known that the maths teacher , shamed in public , should take to hating Maggie with a spiteful glee , though she would probably not have cared if she had . |
| 8 | He stressed that he had relinquished his deferment after only two months , thereby allowing his name to go back into the draft pool at a time when he could not have known that the draft would be shortly replaced by a lottery system . |
| 9 | It could not have happened unless the Church had helped to pay for the heating . |
| 10 | What is , to my mind , incredible , is that he could ever have supposed that the money was being either paid by the plaintiffs or received by the defendants with the intention or on the footing that the defendants were to keep it in any event . |
| 11 | Heavy rain had prevented an ; y play on the first day at Old Trafford , and though high scores were not expected when play got under way on the second day , few people could reasonably have expected that the contest would be over and done with in one day . |
| 12 | One feature alone redeems the book , namely that it illustrates many works which have rarely been reproduced since the original publication of the albums by Redon , though we could also have hoped that the quality of the reproductions were a little better . |
| 13 | Georgina 's father says that boy could also have died and the law must be tightened up . |
| 14 | So one of the boys could well have imagined that the Crumwallises knocked it back enthusiastically in the privacy of their home . |
| 15 | And then a log broke in the hearth , sending sparks cascading , and the shadows leapt , and Grainne remembered all of the old stories , and could almost have believed that the ancient Ireland had awoken at last ; that goblins and satyrs and cloven-hoofed , pointed-eared creatures were prancing in the room with them . |
| 16 | JERVIS : [ reprovingly ] I could never have thought that the son of my dear good lady departed could have so forfeited his honour as to endeavour to destroy a virtue he ought to protect . |
| 17 | Had this volume-composition correlation been known in May 1991 , geologists could safely have predicted that the eruption would last for at least another few months , and would erupt at least twice as much magma again . |