Example sentences of "not so [adv] a [adj] [noun sg] " in BNC.
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| 1 | The example nicely raises the issue of the degree to which a general linguistic theory is committed to giving an account of language understanding : for here we have a complex interaction between deictic words ( clearly a linguistic problem ) and a culture 's temporal reckoning systems ( not so clearly a linguistic problem ) , and the pre-emptive usage of deictic words ( which lies somewhere in between ) . |
| 2 | To summarise this conception : for both Marx and Braverman the developed form of the division of labour within the capitalist enterprise is not so much a technical division of tasks — as in early manufacture — but a socially determined structure , reflecting the exigencies of the production of surplus value . |
| 3 | In some variants of reported speech where the speaker is only implicitly identified , the words may be not so much a straight transformation of what was said as a summary or paraphrase of it . |
| 4 | From Deleuze and Guattari , Lecercle picks up the idea of the potential violence of the institution of language which , as they point out , is not so much a neutral entity that can best be analysed by looking at " normal " ( i.e. declarative ) sentences as a series of other people 's slogans organised into a system of power-relations . |
| 5 | With 13,000 acres of rolling Northamptonshire farmland , more than 100 tied cottages , a valuable collection of paintings , several by Sir Joshua Reynolds , rare books , and seventeenth-century porcelain , furniture and silver , including the Marlborough collection , Althorp was not so much a stately home , more a way of life . |
| 6 | Indeed , I think that the onslaught of modern consumerism is not so much a slavish addiction to fashion as a capitulation to hedonism . |
| 7 | The Council of the Law Society has power to grant waivers in appropriate cases , eg where additional accommodation is not so much a separate office as an annexe to the main place of business , and will as a matter of practice take soundings from the local law society before reaching its decision . |
| 8 | Gluing is not so much a skilled job as a responsible one and a large number of mistakes are available to a determined man , all of which can have dangerous results . |
| 9 | Not so much a staring role ; more part of the support cast . |
| 10 | This is where the spectacular forms of regeneration that characterised the 1980s ( Harvey , 1989 ) were not so much a postmodern discontinuity as a logical extension of the tradition of symbolically rich , effectively marginal , policy palliatives that were offered to the urban crisis from the 1960s onwards . |
| 11 | But , as the editor Andre Fontaine explains : ‘ It is not so much a new layout as a new presentation . |
| 12 | It was not so much a new view as an old view applied to new problems . |
| 13 | Here , you are at the very heart of this beautiful city , staying in not so much a conventional hotel , as a comfortable home from home where your welcoming hosts are Signor and Signora Farnetani . |
| 14 | Thinking of Giles Carnaby , of course , was not so much a considered process as an involuntary twitch . |
| 15 | This is in clear contrast to the divergence model in Indo-European studies , and as a result of this contrast , the shape that emerges from historical language description ( from ancient times to the present day ) is not so much a pyramidal shape ( with gradual convergence at the top ) as a funnel shape ( the kind that is used for pouring liquids ) , as in figure 3.1 . |
| 16 | The ‘ battle between voices ’ in the above passage is not so much a semantic opposition as a fight for rhetorical supremacy . |
| 17 | This is because even a so-called tangible asset represents not so much a physical item as the rights to use that physical item , which in turn derive from ownership or other rights . |
| 18 | BRIAN Johnston is not so much a ball-by-ball cricket commentator , more a national institution . |
| 19 | To criticise language for being ‘ misleading ’ as to the state of affairs in the real world is to tilt at windmills , because language is not so much a limpid pool through which we are to glimpse the truth as a muddy pond full of the debris of history and ideology . |
| 20 | But then , a few days later , Mervyn Stockwood revealed that he had all the time in fact been helping dissident priests in a variety of clandestine ways , still too secret to be fully detailed : not so much a Red Bishop as a clerical Scarlet Pimpernel . |
| 21 | What concerns us is not so much a detailed account of the politics which led to the passing of the acts and to their eventual repeal in the 1880s . |
| 22 | This time it was n't so much a reflex action , an attempt to remove something nasty somewhere down his windpipe , as a deliberate social signal . |