Do we say "Thanks, Henry.' or 'Thank Henry'?

[tulipflower]

Which sentence is grammatical? "Thanks, Henry.' or 'Thank Henry'?

 

[tedmc]

The first. The second is an imperative.

 

[tulipflower]

Which one is acceptable if we want to thank somebody?

 

[Rover_KE]

The first. The second is an imperative.

The first is correct, but it's not a sentence.

 

[TheParser]

Which sentence is grammatical? "Thanks, Henry.' or 'Thank Henry'?

NOT A TEACHER

Henry: Here is the book that I promised to give you today.
Mona: Thanks, Henry. I can always depend on you.

Raul: I have an extra donut. Would you like it?
Mona: Thank you.
Raul: Thank Henry. He's the one who bought the donuts and gave me five. I was able to eat only four of them.

 

[jutfrank]

The first is correct, but it's not a sentence.

Right.

I don't agree. It begins with a capital letter, ends with a full stop, and is a complete, self-contained sense unit.

Rover_KE obviously meant that it's not a grammatical sentence, not that there's no capital letter or full stop.

 

[emsr2d2]

Haven't we had this debate before? I mean the debate about what constitutes a sentence. For me "Thanks, Henry" is a sentence. So is "Yes". Perhaps I am misunderstanding the exchange in posts 9 and 10.

 

[Phaedrus]

For whatever it may be worth, it's interesting, I think, to compare the grammar of "Thank Henry" ("[You] thank Henry") with that of "Thank you" (" thank you") and "Thank God," which, as I analyze it, is the active-voice equivalent of the passive subjunctive "God be thanked." (Footnote: I parse "Thank God" the same way as I parse "F*** you," which, it should be noted, does not have the reflexive pronoun "yourself.") Initially, when I saw "Thank Henry," I thought it was a play on "Thank God": "(May) Henry be thanked."

 

[jutfrank]

Haven't we had this debate before? I mean the debate about what constitutes a sentence. For me "Thanks, Henry" is a sentence.

It's very simple, really—there are two very different ways to define what a sentence is.

Grammatically, Thanks, Henry is not a sentence because it lacks the necessary grammatical structure to be considered one by a grammarian.

In another sense, it can be considered a sentence because if included as part of a text, a writer would punctuate with a full stop before continuing to write. By this definition, a sentence is defined by punctuation rather than structure.

Those are two very different, but fairly well-defined, definitions.

For me, it was obvious which one Rover_KE was using in post #6 because I had exactly the same reaction as he.

 

[jutfrank]

It depends on which grammarian you choose.

I was referring to modern grammar (as well as semantics), which views sentences as structural units.