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COULD HAVE + past participle

B2, C1, disapproval, MODALITY, PAST, possibility, regret, speculate

In the English Grammar Profile, C1 point 179 in MODALITY is defined as:

 ‘could have’ + ‘-ed’ form to express disapproval or criticism.

True insights into usage are problematic, to say the least.  Who knows what the person using language truly was intending to do with it?  Disapproval or criticism vs speculation or regret is very hard to locate in corpora, it requires manual interpretation (something we can’t access easily)


B2 points 140, 142, 158, 176 in the category of MODALITY are used for PAST POSSIBILITY, SPECULATION, REGRET.

On the Left, iWeb corpus gives us the following past participles:

1 COULD HAVE BEEN 178902

On the right further collocations, 4 to the left and right are from COCA corpus:
1 WORSE (JJR ) 542

It could have been worse.
Seems like speculation.

2 AVOIDED (VVN ) 464

Sounds like criticism to me.

3 PREVENTED (VVN ) 357
4 KILLED (VVN ) 278
5 WISH (VV0 ) 227

I wish I could have been there.
This is a pretty clear example of regret.

6 EASILY (RR ) 155

He could have been easily detected.
This seems like criticism to me.

7 SAVED (VVN ) 145
8 CAUSED (VVN ) 93
9 HANDLED (VVN ) 88
10 ANYWHERE (RL ) 87

It could have been anywhere.
Seems like an example of past possibility.

 

 

 

 

2 COULD HAVE DONE 32180

1 SOMETHING (PN1 ) 322


2 BETTER (RRR ) 262


3 THING (NN1 ) 217
4 WITHOUT (IW ) 206
5 NOTHING (PN1 ) 203
6 THINGS (NN2 ) 200
7 JOB (NN1 ) 174
8 ANYTHING (PN1 ) 167
9 DIFFERENTLY (RR ) 159
10 ELSE (RR ) 136

3 COULD HAVE HAD 14021

You let him in and do his work here, and you are a stupid man for what we could have had.

listen

4 COULD HAVE MADE 13903
5 COULD HAVE GONE 12542
6 COULD HAVE USED 11385
7 COULD HAVE GOTTEN 7978
8 COULD HAVE HAPPENED 7390
9 COULD HAVE TAKEN 6741


10 COULD HAVE IMAGINED 6702

  Total Croatia News
Tourism and Sport Minister Nikolina Brnjac Comments on …
… Brnjac, stated last night for HRT that a few months ago, no one could have imagined that the number of tourists would be as it is now.

 


11 COULD HAVE COME 5235
12 COULD HAVE SAVED 5064
13 COULD HAVE CAUSED 4276
14 COULD HAVE SEEN 3691
15 COULD HAVE GIVEN 3464
16 COULD HAVE SAID 3415
17 COULD HAVE GOT 3403
18 COULD HAVE WON 3066
19 COULD HAVE WRITTEN 3016
20 COULD HAVE PUT 2970

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