Re: Marking and Imperatives

Ed Heil wrote:
> Note also that at least in English, there is one verb whose most
> common and morphologically unmarked usage is in the *first* person --
> it allows us to drop the pronoun in the first person just as for
> imperatives we drop the pronoun in the second person.  That verb is
> "to thank" -- "Thank you!" - "(I) thank you!"
I think that's a mere exception, just a contraction of a very common
phrase.  Just as "thank you" is often shortened to the monosyllable
"thanks".  After all, one can't say *"Thanked him for his help", but you
must say "I thanked him for his help".  Only in the single expression
"thank you" can that "I" be dropped, so it follows that it's not a
property of the verb "thank", but rather of that expression.

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