New-York daily tribune., 1858-12-15
PUBLIC MEETINGS.
MR. MARsHs TWELFTH LECTURE.

Professor March devoted his Mondays lecture ID
infection. He defined it, and illustrated a. great
Iergh from the Lsiin comparing the inevitaoe iorn
Of cur oueh with the facile fexibllhy OF Tue ha''u
deL-re. While word expressed the naked "eaulng
Of moral duty without reference to person OF NUMBER
or time condition, the Latin word was rare1 TO III
clude the Specification of all these DIT. Mersh gave
Incidentally the origin Of ought. 1t i, the pretert Of
tbe verb ore which originally had the meaning Of
o,,obt a. we'll A. that of orn. Shakespeare says in
"Twelab Niobt" yourselves we do not owe" aud
AMIN in Macbeth: To throw away the dearest
"tbipg he owes" The preterit ought ca ne
in time to monopoze the moral duty Of
the original meaning Of are; the present
rnonopoized the pecuniary meaning; while ovn came
to express the having. Haze too several languages
had sde-sigoifcatlon somewhat similar ID that Of
ou9h The phrases hore much 10 do, Jai be0ucoup
foTe and Ich hale rel hun all meant that there
was much that must do. Bot hoLen and orosr had
come in German aud French 10 mean not debit but
credit. In comp aug the words ought and debee the
Latin had fifty infections to our one, bat even the
Latin poor compared with other languages. The
Turkish verb was capable Of 1000 infections. But
the Turkish verb had no dual FORMS no forms
for different genders, and no dcsideratve
forms os that OF some other languages had.
Inc speech CT tne cpdu-u Dd,qIos hdl FIX noihhlEe
FORMS twelve of the noun, and peculiar forms Of
eopugation for addressing a child, woman, an equal
or superior. There were two leading methods of in
Hecton; one by prefxDg, affxing or inserting sylls~
bles, called the weak method; the other by chang
ing the vowel Of the verb, a. in lore, lOred-6oy,
Goys-man, men-sink, sank, sunk The Scandna-
van and Teutonic languages much affected the strong
infection There traces, too, in all these langua
ges, of causGtve form Of the verb thus, 10 fail
had its csusstve 10 JtH; 10 lie its causative 10
lay; 10 SIT its causative 10 SCI. This led
people who were Lt perfect in their accidents into
frequent mistakes. Even Byron ended his Apostrophe
TO the Ocean with there let him lay Generally in
our Board Of Education the question Of laying com
muncation other paper the table is put in these
words: "Those in favor Of iytag ne communication
" on the table, viii, their called answer
"aye'-or, eometimes, ~ Those in favor Of lying on
E" tie toble will, &C.. The prefix =, which was often
used by Shakespeare, ard still oftener by his predeces
sors was partcipia infection corresponding to the
German &c. 1t was used but three times by Milton,
and once very strangely in his Sonnet to Shakespeare:
I" "Irder star pointing pyramid Yrs generally
written ,cS, and supposed to mean kRoc, was the
precise counterpart of the German gewiss, cure Mr.
Marsh said that children, who were excellent phiol,
gists preferred the weak form of infection. We often
heard child saying r'ded and RUINED. The strong
form Of Infection might have arisen FROM diGlectc DIFF
ferenoes of pronunciation, while the weak probably
originated in the addition and final assimilation OF
words This last to be the case III the future
Of the Spanish verb: for instance, onore, omards,
0marG, shall love, thou wilt love, he will love, were
nothing but omar to love; he, have have to love;
and with as, thou hast, and a. he las. 50,
too the particle, by the addition Of which the passive
L.. .,,l; nd
plainly that corresponding to our English SELF