A puzzle

Humble   Mon May 14, 2007 10:05 am GMT
Could you help me fit in a word, please? I am transcribing a recording. Two syllables are missing, the stress is on the first.

How many words does an educated adult native speaker of a language know – 10,000, 20,000? In fact it’s a very difficult thing to assess, but experiments are ...... ing that the number is probably somewhere between 50,00 and 250,000.

Thanks
Guest   Mon May 14, 2007 10:26 am GMT
suggesting
furrykef   Mon May 14, 2007 10:34 am GMT
Two missing syllables and the stress is on the first... all the words I can think of violate one of those criteria: suggesting, indicating, showing, revealing, hinting, claiming... the thesaurus isn't helping me much here, either.

It could be two words: "experiments are now hinting..."

Without a copy of the recording or any other information, I don't think I have any other guesses.

- Kef
David B   Mon May 14, 2007 8:09 pm GMT
There are many words that fit the stress pattern: ordering, bargaining, balloting, gathering, etc but the only word I could find that more or less fits the meaning of the sentence is 'positing' I'm not sure whether an 'experiment' as opposed to a person can posit something. Maybe it is two words as Kef suggests.
Humble   Tue May 15, 2007 5:37 am GMT
Thank you all very much.
I can't present the recording here.
Never mind, it won't hurt if I put it as "suggesting".