Under the light of Labovian Sociolinguistics, I take the Brazilian Portuguese connectors E, AÍ, DAÍ, and ENTÃO as variants of the dependent variable "retroactive-propeller sequenciation". The data come from the following sources: (i) "The grapes of wrath", an novel written by John Steinbeck in 1939, the 1940 Brazilian Portuguese translation of which is marked by spoken language traits of the working classes from Rio Grande do Sul (RS), the most southern Brazil State; (ii) 48 interviews from the VARSUL Data Base of Florianópolis (the capital of Santa Catarina State), which were collected during the last decade of the 20th century. My goal are: (i) to seek evidence of change in real time, (ii) to seek evidence of change in apparent time by controlling the social variable 'age', (iii) to interrelate the results regarding the variable 'age' in both periods of time. The results present evidences of change in both real time and apparent time. Moreover, I set up an inter-relationship between the results regarding the variable 'age' at the end of the first half of the 20th century and at the end of the second half of the 20th century. Based on this inter-relationship, I was able to trace a more detailed picture of the changes the connectors E, AÍ, DAÍ, and ENTÃO possibly underwent throughout the 20th century.
Linguistic change; Real time; Apparent time; Connectors; VARSUL; The grapes of wrath
