The empirical study of word learning is driven by a theoretical debate between lexical constraint and social-pragmatic accounts; it has still not been determined which of these two best explains the evidence. We investigated whether the markedness of a pointing accompanying a verbal reference could help to learn a part name. Participants were 35 two-and-a-half-year-olds, 42 four-and-a-half-year-olds, and 38 undergraduate university students in Japan. The experimenter pointed to a novel part (embedded in a novel whole object) with either “marked” pointing, which was touching the part with a small circular motion, or with usual pointing. Touch accompanied by circular motion reliably elicited learning of part names in all age groups. Usual distal pointing without motion reliably elicited learning of whole object names. The pattern of findings rejects a whole-object constraint in early word learning and demonstrates that marked pointing can promote learning novel part names, supporting a social-pragmatic account.

词汇学习的实证研究是由词汇约束和社会语用解释之间的理论争论驱动的；尚未确定这两者中哪一个最能解释证据。我们调查了伴随口头参考的指向标记是否有助于学习零件名称。参与者是日本的 35 名两岁半儿童、42 名四岁半儿童和 38 名本科大学生。实验者用“标记”指向一个新的部分（嵌入在一个新的整个对象中），即以小的圆周运动触摸该部分，或使用通常的指向。伴随圆周运动的触摸可靠地引发了所有年龄组的零件名称的学习。没有运动的通常的远端指向可靠地引发了对整个对象名称的学习。