Grice at the Kindergarten: Please and Thank You (The Implicatures)

Yes, please.
No, thank you.

Is this an odd implicature, or what?

"The fact," Grice notes, "that careful English speakers (as most of us are not), drop the imperative exclamation mark in 'please' is a mark that what once was a conversational implicature has fossilised, or, assimilated," to echo Kramer.

Thus, the Concise OED:

"please": imperat., orig. = "may it please you";
polite form of request, esp. of trifling
services.

This is Fowler's idea of concision, from the big OED2:

"please!" (imperative or optative) was apparently
originally short for

"please you" = "may it (or let it) please you";

but it is now usually taken as =

"Be pleased",

or as short for

"if you please".

This use of "please" appears to have been unknown
to Shakespeare, whose shortest form is

"please you".

When parenthetical, or without construction,
"please" is =

"may it please you",
"if it please you",
"if you please";

e.g. "Please, may I go out?";
"May I come in, please?"; "Come here, please";
"Give me my hat, please"; "Please, Sir, did you call?";
"Shall I ring the bell? Yes, please."; "Will you,
please, take a message for me?"

QUOTE:

1898 G. B. Shaw Plays II. You never can tell 309
"Yes, sir. Please, who are you?"

Etc.