Example sentences of "to [be] [modal v] be " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
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| 1 | To say what it ought to be would be to express attitudes of his own , which he does not regard as the task of the kind of philosopher like himself who is , in his professional work , trying to understand ethical discussion rather than to participate in it . |
| 2 | ‘ I have no … merits yet ; and what I want to be would be nothing to you . ’ |
| 3 | In all such cases you may not be satisfied to receive even large damages for the wrong done ; and what the amount of damages is to be may be very uncertain . |
| 4 | It is revealing that , in a very similar way , to be can be present or omitted in an actual non-finite clause where it signals the passive of a verb phrase although its presence is generally preferred : ( 48 ) Cromwell ordered the Abbot of Reading ( to be ) tried and executed immediately The same insertion is sometimes superficially possible for predicate qualifiers ; but in reality this indicates a main verb which is semantically compatible with the relation of either construction ; an example would be like ( or want ) which makes it possible for us to set ( 49 ) beside ( 8 ) : ( 49 ) Alastair likes his beef tea to be strong However , with most preceding verb phrases , such a change to the predicate qualifier construction will produce a result which is ungrammatical and may even present difficulties of interpretation : ( 50 ) ( a ) the children have kept the fish-tank clean : how have the children kept the fish-tank ? ( b ) the children have kept the fish-tank to be clean |
| 5 | I think it is an area where and I think it needs to be will be doing that . |
| 6 | Well there 's something that will have to be will be |