Is there a rule prescribing the absence of the -eth third person ending in late middle English?

Question

Is there a rule prescribing the absence of the *-eth* third person ending in late middle English ?In the King James Bible, there are many verses which contain verbs in the third person without the -eth a the end, for example : >Psalm 7:2 Lest **he tear** my soul like a lion, rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver. Is there a particular reason for this ? Would "Lest he teareth" have been correct ? (I've been thinking that maybe it was a subjunctive, that wouldn't take the ending or something of the sort)

Answer 1

It is my understanding that no hard rules on English Grammar were established until the language had evolved into "modern English" (not to be confused with Contemporary English which we are all used to. The first true grammar book was published in 1586 by William Buklokar, but this puts us out of the realm of middle English. The same would also be true of King James Bible, which surfaced in the mid-17th century.

That being said, the loss of the third person *eth suffix may actually be a result of grammar books. As English began to surpass Latin in importance in English schools ( a long and arduous process indeed) the need to formalize the language and its grammar become more and more important. But to do this, some normalizing of the rules had to be done. In linguistics I believe the term is paradigm leveling, meaning that either by the need to simplify or the natural evolution of the spoken language, people began the attempt to make the grammar a bit more unified across tenses, conjugations, and point of view perspectives. The *eth not being as prominent across other grammatical norms most likely fell to the wayside.