Masked Indexicality in the Sinosphere: A Neuropragmatic Account of Zero Anaphora in Chinese and Vietnamese

This paper examines the phenomenon of Masked Indexicality in Chinese and Vietnamese, in which speakers routinely omit the first-person pronoun when reporting their own states or actions. I propose a Dual-Track Recovery mechanism to explain how the omitted agent is nevertheless reliably recovered. One track draws on pragmatic scaffolding grounded in the speaker’s physical presence and shared context. The other operates through sensorimotor simulation, whereby the listener’s brain recruits motor and sensory circuits associated with the reported experience. These two tracks interact, allowing the first-person perspective to remain implicit while still being fully recoverable. Beyond its cognitive and pragmatic dimensions, the paper also considers how this linguistic pattern in Vietnamese resonates with longstanding cultural orientations, particularly those influenced by Buddhist thought, which have historically encouraged reduced explicit assertion of the self. This convergence between grammatical resources and cultural disposition helps explain why masked indexicality feels natural and efficient in everyday Vietnamese interaction. The account contributes to cognitive semantics by showing that indexicality can be distributed across linguistic structure, bodily co-presence, and neural processes, and that such distribution may be reinforced by broader cultural tendencies regarding self-reference.