Example sentences of "[coord] [vb past] [been] [prep] [noun] " in BNC.

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1 Virtually everybody there had been held on remand or had been to prison before , so knew how the prison ran .
2 Whatever was or had been between Matthew and Jenny was not yet resolved , Sara realised from Jenny 's preoccupation with the man .
3 Anyone who 'd paid money for their dog , or did n't know where it had been , should take it to the god in Lāmri to be blessed and cured : and if anyone had been bitten recently , or had been in contact with the rabid dog , they too should see that god .
4 The present superintendent estimated at this time that about half of all girls coming there had never really had any home life , or had been in care , and believed that this cycle would repeat itself : " as high as 85 per cent of these babies , it 's going to happen to them .
5 Patrick had fallen off a ladder over a year and a half ago and had been off work for much of that time .
6 Hugh was 62 years ' old and had been with Douglas Reyburn for 28 years .
7 Wheeler said he had been a member of the force for twelve and a half years and had been on duty on the Docks since last August .
8 Alex , who had given me the cigarettes , was Scottish and had been at Lille for three days ; he had deserted from the Military Police in Germany , and thought that French food was nowhere as good as Glaswegian .
9 On that afternoon of Tuesday , 31 August , McQueen 's daughter served them tea ; she wore a print linen dress , and had been to Inverness for a year 's education in reading , writing , sewing , knotting , lace- and pastry-making .
10 Every Sunday on our way back from church , we 'd call on Mrs Wright , whose son was a Schools Inspector and had been to Cambridge .
11 He was drinking like a fish , and had been for weeks .
12 A recent divorce petition cited the fact that just about every wall , fitment and piece of furniture in the home was in a half-dismantled or half-done state and had been for years .
13 It was dark , and had been since mid-afternoon .
14 The necessity of constructing popular consent among the electorate was an important component of Conservative thought , and had been since extension of the franchise to sections of the urban working classes in 1867 .
15 Yet blind instinct told her that Rohan was her man , and had been since time began .
16 He had entered the police station in a storm of self-righteous protest and had been by turn hectoring , belligerent and spiteful .
17 The Wingti government also claimed that the army 's advance was largely unresisted and had been in response to the invitation of local chiefs .
18 The party had been the largest in parliament for most years until 1966 , and had been in government ( usually with the Social Democrats ) almost constantly until 1987 .
19 He had come from Bangladesh about three months previously and had been in school about two months .
20 Councillors , most of whom had strong local roots and had been in power for many years , came to believe they had a permanent mandate and readily resisted any challenge to their authority .
21 Though only 53 , he had been associated with the School for 44 years , having been a pupil at Greek Street , and had been in charge of Greek since 1938 .
22 Zabaleta , 39 , known in ETA as Waldo , had been involved with ETA since he was a teenager and had been in charge of its itinerant commandos since 1984 .
23 Vu Oanh , 67 , and Le Phuoc Tho , 64 , were both elected to the secretariat in 1986 and had been in charge of mass mobilization and agriculture , respectively ; Pham Van Kai , 58 , the Soviet-trained Chair of the State Commission for Planning , was one of five southerners in the new politburo and a former mayor of Ho Chi Minh City ; Bui Thien Ngo , 62 , was Permanent Vice-Minister of the Interior ; Nong Duc Manh , 51 , a member of the Tay ethnic group and the first minority leader to be elected to the politburo , was head of the central committee 's commission for nationalities ; Pham The Duyet , 55 , was secretary of the Hanoi party committee and a former trade union leader ; Nguyen Duc Binh , 64 , was director of the Nguyen Duc Binh Institute for training party cadres ; Vo Tran Chi , 64 , was secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City party committee .
24 The defendant had been a director of plaintiffs for 13 years and had been in charge of the development and sales of a certain type of heater .
25 President Taya had followed up a July 29 amnesty for state security and press law offenders with a further amnesty , announced on Aug. 18 , for people who had been sentenced in their absence and had been in exile for over 15 years .
26 Among the most prominent of Syrian political prisoners was Noureddin al-Atasi , who had immediately preceded Assad as President and had been in prison since 1970 .
27 Individual country quotas had last been agreed in Geneva on July 26-27 , 1990 , immediately prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait [ see p. 37632 ] , and had been in disuse since then .
28 I pointed out that I had not been to the polytechnic , but had been to Durham University on a scholarship — only the second the force had been awarded .
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