Example sentences of "it [be] [det] " in BNC.

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1 Where 's it been all these years ?
2 Has it been much of a problem on the flats ?
3 Had it been any night other than Wednesday , he would have staggered out .
4 Question : What do you say to suggestions made by the court that had it been any other man you would have simply warned them ?
5 Arguments against it are many and convincing : it is wrong to require a woman to depend on a man , particularly when he has no legal or moral obligation to maintain her .
6 If you struck lucky on one of those multi-dialled combination locks on bank safes , it would seem a very major miracle , for the odds against it are many millions to one , and you would be able to steal a fortune .
7 The workers who defend it are all sisters and all sterile .
8 However , in my opinion , the best parts of it are those which present not so much the strictly emotivist thesis as a more general attitudinist thesis which is more convincing when detached from the former .
9 A purely syntactically ill-formed sentence , on the other hand , is irredeemably deviant , and the only contexts which can accommodate it are those which induce a tolerance for grammatical incompetence or , at any rate , nonconformity :
10 But the poem progressed farther in the mind than on paper , and all that survives of it are some verse fragments describing the distant wail of swallows and seagulls , water dripping one Sunday from the miller 's wheel ( perhaps at Kilve ) , the snow blown curling from a wood ‘ like pillars of cottage smoke ’ , and a wild Quantock pony racing in the wind .
11 It is the club 's notepaper and written on it are these words :
12 Or could it be that , by the merest possible chance , Steffi is in fact …
13 I looked carefully about me , hiding behind one of those contorted shapes , and glimpsed Dana in the distance , walking away from the group of friends and joining a young woman , tall , pale , dark , distinguished-looking — could it be that dancer of his ?
14 Could it be that Europeanism is in direct proportion to dissatisfaction with one 's own political institutions ?
15 Might it be that living with Phillis had turned him patsy , a dope to any skirt ?
16 Can it be that without the accompanying ‘ form ’ of the lessons of the past , of which memory is a vital part , ‘ freedom ’ can never be more than a fragile short-lived luxury ?
17 Could it be that , like me , more and more readers are dreaming of the time when they can either afford to move home or , at the very least , redecorate their existing one ?
18 Could it be that … ?
19 Could it be that , subconsciously , motherhood gave them a feeling of power ?
20 Was the Universe destined to go on expanding forever , or might it be that gravity would eventually pull all the galaxies back together again until there was a ‘ Big Crunch ’ — later to be followed by a new Big Bang ?
21 After all , why should it be that particular one ?
22 Could it be that Sun Microsystems Inc president Scott McNealy 's voice is being heard this side of the Atlantic , after he reportedly told Novell Inc 's Ray Noorda to fire everyone at Unix System Labs except a handful of marketing guys and the engineers ?
23 Now you will be able to take advantage , for instance , of making a really sympathetic figure seem so likely to have committed the murder that your readers will be crying out , " Oh , no , no , do n't let it be that " .
24 Could it be that Mathilde and her father had …
25 Could it be that , or was it more likely that she and Mr Broadhurst had agreed it between them ?
26 Oh please , thought Grainne , please let it be that , for I have come so far to find it .
27 Could it be that ? she wondered , in the few seconds before he spoke .
28 Could it be that … ?
29 Could it be that er evolution in sort of Aboriginal societies are more harsher than that allowed for a more experienced man to teach a young child how to live as opposed to , it , it 's beneficial for
30 Could it be that , in preparing these editions , d'Indy was looking over his shoulder at Rameau 's great contemporaries Bach and Handel , both of whom were not only foreign but , worse , Protestant ?
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