Example sentences of "[vb past] they [modal v] [verb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Hence a hereditary mechanism which transmitted them would result in continued degeneration . |
| 2 | The programmers who designed them may have been any of these things , but that is irrelevant . |
| 3 | Having already told them how I proposed they should move I demonstrated it by moving one of the pepper pots around the table . |
| 4 | As they entered they could hear someone playing a cello . |
| 5 | Experts say chicanes do work but wrongly designed they can speed traffic up . |
| 6 | At the Manor Ground they 'll remember ; remember the 3rd of November for some time . |
| 7 | Finally 5 Corps stated to Eighth Army : " it would appear that unless these formations are taken over by us as formed bodies and disarmed they will force their way across border as individual bandits plunder the country disorganise economic life our zone and threatened our security . |
| 8 | If he moved they would see him ; if he stayed still they would find him . |
| 9 | ‘ I met thousands of people who pretended they could teach me how to do it . |
| 10 | Well , now he had gone to find her , but if his Eileen was really an angel she doubted they would meet , for Paddy had been no saint . |
| 11 | I doubted they could afford much more today , but the small dirty children seemed happy enough on their thirty by twenty yards of straw . |
| 12 | No-one 's ever bungee-jumped from a balloon before , but as Ian went up , up and away , none of his home town fans ever doubted they 'd see him again . |
| 13 | But as a dutiful wife , she managed to put a good face on it , particularly after her husband promised they would return again in the spring . |
| 14 | He apologised , said he felt tired , and promised they would meet again when some decisions could be made . |
| 15 | They had no church affiliation : some were hurt , others were strong , but they all found they could commit themselves heart and soul to what we were doing . |
| 16 | Then , when I really insisted that they keep right on the centre line , they found they could do it if they tried hard . |
| 17 | Well they found they could do it far better with a tractor and a mower . |
| 18 | They found they could switch on particular groups of atoms with a pulse of electricity and they stayed switched on for up to two days . |
| 19 | It is just as likely that some viruses evolved from more complex organisms — that they are cell fragments which found they could earn a perfectly good living simply by sponging off others . |
| 20 | They found they could explain all the experimental data on neutral weak currents by assuming quantum mixing between the electromagnetic current and the neutral weak current . |
| 21 | But when they descended by special lift from the fifth , nomenklatura floor , they found they could traverse only one passage . |
| 22 | In the 1960s , when bank credit was tight , companies found they could use the services of a broker to lend to one another . |
| 23 | The three found they could speed up the development of the 601 chip by combining work already under way at IBM with Motorola chip technology , and early next year , IBM , Apple and Motorola will announce the PowerOpen Association to rally support for the chip , which has so far won the backing only of Compagnie des Machines Bull SA and Thomson-CSF SA . |
| 24 | Students of literature , traditionally resentful as they often are to be told they might be engaged in anything severely useful , found they could sell their talents abroad as teachers , and had to tolerate the uncomfortably realistic view that the nation might recover through the teaching of English some small part of the wealth it had lost on technical adventures like building and running Concorde . |
| 25 | In the mid-seventies , porn magazine publishers , notably the arriviste David Sullivan , found they could get away with far more explicit pictures of women than before . |
| 26 | Earlier in the decade ‘ propaganda ’ among a few chosen workers had been rejected in favour of mass agitation as revolutionaries found they could articulate the detailed grievances of workers in specific factories and print them in agitational leaflets . |
| 27 | They had also created for themselves a moral environment to which few Englishmen found they could take serious exception . |
| 28 | Being asked to write stories that would distinguish an idiosyncratic , individualistic and , in some ways , rather odd group of people from the militaristic , regimented and brutal régime they were fighting against , was a challenge to which many found they could rise . |
| 29 | Erm if I tried they would have caught me so I just stand still and do n't scream or cry because I 'll get some more . |
| 30 | For some time afterwards whenever a crisis occurred they would ask each other , ‘ What would Père Obein say ? ’ |