Celtic substrate influence

[Vidhyanath Rao]

Larry Trask <larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk> wrote:
> In Parisian French, the preterite seems to have disappeared from
> speech by about the 16th century, according to Price,

I have seen the statement made that in the 17th c., the distinction was that
perfect = past of today and attributed to something called Port Royale
Grammar. [Comrie's book on Tense might have been the source.] I don't know
if this refers to the written language, but that seems a bit odd.

-Nath