Example sentences of "can [adv] have [vb pp] [det] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Mrs Cresson 's appointment may have helped the Socialists somewhat but can not have done much for the Communists . |
| 2 | ‘ What you did to them can not have done much to put right what their own families had already done . ’ |
| 3 | They can not have done this only by dividing the language into neat areas , for the areas interact in complex ways in which the whole is not equal to the sum of the parts . |
| 4 | Yet since these can not have presented much of an obstacle , they were of little or no use against large and determined forces of men , against whom only walled towns and castles constituted reasonably sure places of safety . |
| 5 | This is a point that can not have escaped those who will be chosing the England/Scotland/N.I. managers . |
| 6 | The parties can not have intended such a consequence . |
| 7 | ‘ You can not have expected such a satisfactory development for the World at such a late stage in the debate . ’ |
| 8 | Straw Dogs managed to attract enough blood seekers to put it into the black at the box-office , but this disturbing tale of rural atrocities can scarcely have done much for the Cornish tourist industry . |
| 9 | There is no evidence that the Ministry of Works spent more on the public sewers than on the helpless , but they can scarcely have expended less money or effort on them . |
| 10 | Because we have so many cameras I can have for the editing a great many possibilities ; and if we have filmed the music properly in the first place we can already have created some very important effects just with one shot — the violins may have the principal melody with an important counter-melody or harmonic detail in the violas , so we might shoot the passage in such a way that we have the violin bows in the foreground , the conductor , and the violas clearly focused as the third element in the shot . |
| 11 | Knowing what the Bushmen knew then — that the NEA was unpopular with conservative legislators and already the target of fundamentalist Christians for subsidising offensive art — they can hardly have seen this as a plum they could hand to a big contributor or a rising political star or , indeed , to anybody aiming to leave town alive . |
| 12 | Even though Gundovald can never have said some of the things which Gregory attributes to him , the bishop of Tours must have had some reason for putting the words into his mouth . |