-est vs. -st verb endings in Early Modern English
I've been Googling for a little while tonight, but I can't seem to find any rules on this.
Irregular ("strong") verbs seem to be pretty set in their endings: goest, dost. But when I get to something like "bring", it seems almost like "bringst" and "bringest" are equally valid, and I can't find any examples to lead me to one sort of rule or another. If anyone could shed some light on this, I'd appreciate it.
John Lawler posted this answer as a comment:
Spelling was still pretty irregular and personal in EME.
There is no real difference between -est and -st endings in EME; the vowel is placed there at the whim of the speller, since the e was unstressed and often not pronounced at all.
The 2sg verb inflection was /-st/ after vowels and resonants, with an epenthetic vowel inserted to break up unruly clusters with some verbs. Thus bring ends in a resonant, and /brɪŋst/ is not hard to pronounce, while a verb like cost probably needs epenthesis.
There was a lot of variation — often political — about using 2sg suffixes.