Example sentences of "can have [been] [det] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | Conditions for a Sussex ‘ miner , , or factor carbonis , can have been little different from that of later centuries , a nomadic life lived in the woods , shelter in bad weather being provided by the simple turf-covered pole shelters that were still in use forty years ago . |
| 2 | It is easy at this distance in time to explain the pattern away as an inevitable feature of the wider transition from one form of economy to another , but there can have been little pleasure for families like the Eldridges or Mepkins of Battle whose members appeared regularly in the poor-relief accounts over several generations . |
| 3 | However , sites were not usually so well located , and even when distant from sources of suitable stone , there can have been little special movement of material in such small quantities as were required for cs . |
| 4 | If the mark of a reborn evangelical is a devotion to the Epistles of St Paul and in particular to the doctrine of Justification by Faith , then there can have been few Christian converts less evangelical than Lewis . |
| 5 | In February 1973 , when I first decided to make the journey , there can have been few twenty-eight year olds who were less fit for the task . |
| 6 | It is easy now to regard this wonder at an enemy 's humanity as naïve , but as it is the business of war to foster the naïveté on which it thrives , so there can have been few people in England during the isolation years of 1940–42 who did not take the impersonal nature of their enemy for granted . |
| 7 | There can have been few more painful moments in Melvyn Bragg 's professional life than when he sat in the audience of a public performance where Barry Humphries , in the guise of Edna Everage , asked if anyone had read any of Bragg 's novels and nobody raised their hand . |
| 8 | So widely dispersed was industrial activity that there can have been few parts of the country that did not support it in one form or another . |