This is not the Case of the Indirect Object: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Factors in Double Object Marking Constructions in a Contact Variety of Spanish from Eastern North Carolina

This article presents the results of a sociolinguistic study focusing on the expression of double object marking constructions (DbOM) in the contact variety of Spanish spoken in Pitt County, North Carolina. For the purposes of this article, DbOM constructions are defined as those utterances in which an accusative or dative clitic co-occurs with a coreferential overt nominal phrase. The data resulting from study participant interviews were analyzed to contrast the availability and variation of DbOM constructions with respect to sociolinguistic and linguistic factors. Confirming the initial hypothesis stemming from the absence of any type of argument doubling in English, the study’s results reveal that extent of daily English use in Pitt County is a significant factor in the expression of DbOM constructions. Moreover, and in agreement with the third proposed hypothesis, the case assigned to the doubled argument as well as the type of predicate, rather than the contrast between direct and indirect objects, are significant factors in the type of object doubling observed.

Walking a Chalk Line

This chapter describes how midwife-attended home births declined dramatically as poor and minority women gain access to hospital birth with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the advent of Medicaid in 1965. With her clientele dwindling, Lovie returns to work at the Beaufort County Health Department, where she butts heads with a new generation of health officials not as supportive of her nurse-midwifery work as the previous generation had been and who expect her to adhere strictly to the letter of the granny law. Although Lovie employed a dual bag strategy to skirt the law, she maintains that she always strictly followed proper bag technique. She discusses problems she encountered with the health officer of Pitt County, problems that led her to deliver a handful of Pitt County women in her Beaufort County home.

The association between the food environment and weight status among eastern North Carolina youth

ObjectiveTo examine associations between various measures of the food environment and BMI percentile among youth.DesignCross-sectional, observational.SettingPitt County, eastern North Carolina.SubjectsWe extracted the electronic medical records for youth receiving well child check-ups from January 2007 to June 2008. We obtained addresses for food venues from two secondary sources and ground-truthing. A geographic information systems database was constructed by geocoding home addresses of 744 youth and food venues. We quantified participants’ accessibility to food venues by calculating ‘coverage’, number of food venues in buffers of 0·25, 0·5, 1 and 5 miles (0·4, 0·8, 1·6 and 8·0 km) and by calculating ‘proximity’ or distance to the closest food venue. We examined associations between BMI percentile and food venue accessibility using correlation and regression analyses.ResultsThere were negative associations between BMI percentile and coverage of farmers’ markets/produce markets in 0·25 and 0·5 mile Euclidean and 0·25, 0·5 and 1 mile road network buffers. There were positive associations between BMI percentile and coverage of fast-food and pizza places in the 0·25 mile Euclidean and network buffers. In multivariate analyses adjusted for race, insurance status and rural/urban residence, proximity (network distance) to convenience stores was negatively associated with BMI percentile and proximity to farmers’ markets was positively associated with BMI percentile.ConclusionsAccessibility to various types of food venues is associated with BMI percentile in eastern North Carolina youth. Future longitudinal work should examine correlations between accessibility to and use of traditional and non-traditional food venues.