Example sentences of "can [vb infin] only [num] [noun] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | The female cuckoo can mimic only one type of egg and must try to lay in a nest of this species if her offspring is to have a good chance of survival . |
| 2 | — the system can consider only one interpretation of an ambiguous sentence at a time , but can easily ’ flip ’ between interpretations ( as in visual disambiguation of the Necker Cube ) ; |
| 3 | I would be surprised if he did not agree with me that it is wrong that the Tate can buy only one picture a year . |
| 4 | A standard dot-matrix printer can show only two states , black and white , but shades of grey can be used to represent colours if 2 x 2 or 3 x 3 dot matrices are used to display each single screen pixel . |
| 5 | As we saw earlier , the claim that the STV can be a " vote for a coalition " must be rejected : if you have only one vote it can benefit only one party . |
| 6 | I can see only one way in which this question can be approached quantitatively . |
| 7 | I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave … , " . |
| 8 | Perhaps lawyers and judges accept that proposition as true by convention , which means true just because everyone else accepts it , the way chess players all accept that a king can move only one square at a time . |
| 9 | Note 1.2.3 One other thing 1.2.2 does for us is to prove that Z can contain only one subset N with the properties listed in axiom P. ( If M is a subset of Z satisfying P then either 1 or -1 belongs to M. It follows from 1.2.2 that unc and then from axiom P(ii) that , in any case , 1 ε M. Similarly 1 ε N and hence |
| 10 | Looking back to that nightmarish night in the wake of her conversion , Mary can suggest only one explanation . |
| 11 | Consider the concept , common in high-level languages , of the boolean variable , that is , a variable which can take only two values ( true and false ) and upon which the usual boolean functions — and , or , etc.ban be Performed . |
| 12 | You will remember that electrons have a quantity called spin whose component in any assigned direction can take only two values , " up " or " down " ( p. 22 ) . |
| 13 | The railway bridge can take only one vehicle at a time and obscures visibility . |
| 14 | As there are only a finite number of edge pieces and the process RU can take only one edge piece into a new ‘ edge piece ’ position , this sequence must cycle back to the beginning and we denote this ‘ 7-cycle ’ as ( FR , UF , UL , UB , UR , BR , DR ) . |
| 15 | The time needed to reach a solution to a problem is much longer ( i.e. it could take several hours or even days ) than the implementation/repair ( i.e. replacing a module or a board/panel can take only 30 minutes ) . |
| 16 | Most of the high street banks and the top 10 building societies are tied agents , and so can sell only one brand of insurance policy . |
| 17 | County Court witness summonses can name only one witness and should be applied for not less than seven days before attendance is required . |
| 18 | A MEMBER-OF-PARLIAMENT can only represent one constituency , and one CONSTITUENCY can have only one MEMBER-OF-PARLIAMENT . |
| 19 | But some philosophers get themselves tied in knots because they implicitly assume that the cat can have only one history . |
| 20 | Significantly , they are convinced that such extreme instances of violent behaviour can have only one purpose : killing and eating the enemy . |
| 21 | Among the worst is the Department of Education 's headquarters secretariat — serving ministers and top civil servants — which costs £4.19 a time , but can produce only 29 memos per typist per day . |
| 22 | If she has ventured beyond the car it can mean only one thing — it 's stopped raining ! |
| 23 | To estimate the number of synonyms that occur during creation of a direct file using a one-pass load , let us examine the result of storing n records at random in N addresses , on the assumption that each record has to be stored at once and each address can hold only one record . |
| 24 | The present church can hold only 60–70 people . |
| 25 | The richest in the land can pay only three times as much as the person in the most lowly valued , difficult-to-let council house . |
| 26 | A beetle can pass only one gene to each of its offspring . |
| 27 | that , as a man whose responses are so dulled by routine that he can recall only 2 hr 17 min of unambiguous happiness in the past few years , I am not happy . |
| 28 | The female tsetse can bear only one baby at a time and in all her six month life , she can produce no more than a dozen . |
| 29 | Predators such as cats can handle only one duck at a time , so if you are a duck it makes sense to sleep in flocks . |
| 30 | Writing about the immediate aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution , the Kiev-born writer Mikhail Bulgakov recalled : ‘ I can say only one thing for the moment — according to the calculations of the Kievans they had 18 changes of power . |