Is there a trace first person pronoun before the utterance "thank you", making it shorthand for "I/we thank you"?
A ramification of this question is an expression of gratitude I just heard that didn't sit right with me:
Thank both of you for coming.
This sounded strange, almost like my intuition was to interpret it as a command for someone to thank themselves (?). My intuition would have preferred
Thank you both for coming.
I convinced myself that the former would sound acceptable if there is an implicit first person pronoun preceding every "thank you" because "I thank you both for coming" is perfectly natural. Is there a trace there or is "thank you" an atomic phrase with some other underlying syntax (or none at all)?
Thank all of you!