Example sentences of "can [vb infin] only " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | Here the examiner will probably have divided up the possible marks in his mind among the component parts , and an answer to one part , be it ever so brilliant , can earn only the appropriate total for that part . |
| 2 | Such details matter because western telecoms companies can make only limited investments until they know when and how they might gain a return . |
| 3 | Telepoint phones can make only outgoing calls but Hutchison feels its £50m investment in setting up over 12,000 base stations to transmit calls will overcome earlier problems . |
| 4 | This means that plant breeders who try to create higher-yielding or disease-resistant varieties by selection or hybridisation from existing varieties can make only limited progress ; the genes they need are simply not found in the cultivated populations . |
| 5 | There is , however , no clear one-to-one relationship between discourse type and sender and receiver , and for many words denoting discourse type ( song , for example , or article ) we can make only the vaguest connections . |
| 6 | But specialist services can make only a fairly modest contribution to an overall plan for services in a multiracial society unless mainstream services are also radically overhauled in those areas with substantial ethnic populations . |
| 7 | At this stage we can make only tentative suggestions . |
| 8 | But since he can think only of a few things at a time , the routine function of his noble gift of reason must be to correct spontaneous reactions and keep them running in an intelligent direction . |
| 9 | Approaching this cosmology , it is natural for an outsider to suppose that the Chinese can think only concretely , after the analogies of breathing or the veins in jade ( a supposition encouraged by misunderstandings of Chinese script as a kind of picture-writing ) , while he thinks abstractly ; that the Chinese are wrong and he is right ( for is not the universe in fact composed of matter obeying the laws of nature ? ) ; that the Chinese are trapped within an unchanging conceptual scheme while he is free to go wherever reason bids . |
| 10 | But for a beetle who can think only in terms of two dimensions , it does appear to shrink . |
| 11 | Whereas a line-printer can output only entire characters , the dot-matrix printer can output individual dots in the 6 by 9 dot matrix mentioned above . |
| 12 | The patient can explain only what the problem is . |
| 13 | The scientific evidence may be lacking , but there is a colossal body of anecdotal evidence in favour of ESP — and there are few people who , in honesty , can not recall one or more instances in which they themselves have had an experience which they can explain only in terms of it . |
| 14 | Organizations can absorb only a small number of people with these work goals . |
| 15 | But world markets can absorb only so much coffee , copper and cotton , or for that matter T-shirts , motor-bikes and transistors . |
| 16 | False perception can arise only if the nervous system has spontaneous activity independently of any causative external object . |
| 17 | Man 's cultural development can arise only at the cost of a persisting lack of satisfaction of those sexual impulses which are seen as improper by men and women — the higher the degree of civilization and education , the greater the number of unsatisfied impulses . |
| 18 | Treaty does not preclude a nationality requirement of the type at issue in the main proceedings , because discrimination on grounds of nationality can arise only where , under the law of a member state , persons are treated differently on account of their nationality . |
| 19 | Liability arises only when there is a nuclear incident which occurs at or in connection with certain nuclear installations , or in the course of transport of nuclear substances , and it can arise only in connection with licensed nuclear sites . |
| 20 | Both laboratory experiments and numerical simulations have demonstrated that plumes can arise only at a boundary between convective regimes , such as that between the Earth 's core and mantle at a depth of 2,900 km . |
| 21 | Chaotic behaviour can arise only when the governing equations are non-linear . |
| 22 | We have noted that chaotic behaviour can arise only for systems governed by non-linear equations . |
| 23 | Owing to the changes made in the law of intestate succession ( see pp. 111–13 ) , coparcenary can exist only in the case of an entailed interest . |
| 24 | The point is that an orderly community can exist only if it shares many practices , and that in all modern pluralistic societies a great measure of toleration of vastly differing outlooks is made possible by the fact that many of them enable the vast majority of the population to accept common standards of conduct . |
| 25 | Between Ulthuan and Naggaroth there can exist only war unto the death . |
| 26 | This , it is claimed , provides at the same time a clue as to the meaning of fiction ; for fiction really is the result of treating that which can exist only derivatively , or " parasitically " , as if it existed in its own right . |
| 27 | Citizen involvement requires the opportunity and incentive to act , which in turn can exist only if political structures offer many points of relatively easy access — which means strong local government . |
| 28 | And the reason we observe this thermodynamic arrow to agree with the cosmological arrow is that intelligent beings can exist only in the expanding phase . |
| 29 | It seems clear then that life , at least as we know it , can exist only in regions of space-time in which one time and three space dimensions are not curled up small . |
| 30 | It could be said that from the point of view of social research , the world only exists as data and data can exist only through the interpretations placed on materials gathered from the world . |