Sources of variation at the onset of bilingualism: The differential effect of input factors, AOA, and cognitive skills on HL Arabic and L2 English syntax

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Adriana SOTO-COROMINAS ◽  
Evangelia DASKALAKI ◽  
Johanne PARADIS ◽  
Magdalena WINTERS-DIFANI ◽  
Redab AL JANAIDEH
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Migrant Children ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Structure Factors ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
Sources Of Variation ◽  
Input Variables ◽  
English Syntax

Abstract Despite growing research on individual differences in child bilinguals, few studies have focused on the development of syntax, included both languages, and studied newly arrived school-age migrant children. Accordingly, this study investigated the syntactic development of heritage language (HL) Syrian Arabic and L2 English by Syrian refugee children (N = 119) recently arrived in Canada using a sentence repetition task. Regression analyses showed that a partially overlapping set of child-level (input and cognitive skills) and language-level (syntactic structure) factors accounted for performance in each language. HL performance was particularly sensitive to language, cognitive, and input variables indexing cumulative HL exposure. L2 performance, however, was sensitive to cognitive and environmental variables indexing current and cumulative L2 use. Finally, despite stronger performance in Arabic than in English, results revealed interdependence between the two languages, indicating that participants with stronger syntactic abilities in their HL tended to have stronger syntactic abilities in their emerging L2.

scholarly journals Morphosyntactic Development in First Generation Arabic—English Children: The Effect of Cognitive, Age, and Input Factors over Time and across Languages

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Johanne Paradis ◽  
Adriana Soto-Corominas ◽  
Evangelia Daskalaki ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
Alexandra Gottardo
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Parent Questionnaire ◽  
Morphosyntactic Development ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Input Variables ◽  
Direct Measures ◽  
Over Time

This longitudinal study examined morphosyntactic development in the heritage Arabic-L1 and English-L2 of first-generation Syrian refugee children (mean age = 9.5; range = 6–13) within their first three years in Canada. Morphosyntactic abilities were measured using sentence repetition tasks (SRT) in English and Syrian Arabic that included diverse morphosyntactic structures. Direct measures of verbal and non-verbal cognitive skills were obtained, and a parent questionnaire provided the age at L2 acquisition onset (AOA) and input variables. We found the following: Dominance in the L1 was evident at both time periods, regardless of AOA, and growth in bilingual abilities was found over time. Cognitive skills accounted for substantial variance in SRT scores in both languages and at both times. An older AOA was associated with superior SRT scores at Time−1 for both languages, but at Time-2, older AOA only contributed to superior SRT scores in Arabic. Using the L2 with siblings gave a boost to English at Time−1 but had a negative effect on Arabic at Time-2. We conclude that first-generation children show strong heritage-L1 maintenance early on, and individual differences in cognitive skills have stable effects on morphosyntax in both languages over time, but age and input factors have differential effects on each language and over time.

Migrant childhood and the ‘webdiaspora’ in Brazil

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-375
Author(s):  
Juliana Doretto
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
Migrant Children ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
Migrant Child ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Paulo State ◽  
São Paulo State

This study aims to identify the representations of migrant childhood in Brazilian digital media that belong to what we call the ‘webdiaspora’ – media outlets produced by or for migrants. We argue that these migrant and refugee children live in an ‘in-between’ condition, not physically but symbolically. They build their identities not only negotiating the stereotypes of what it is to be a child in their nation of origin and in the country they live in but also through the representations of what it is to be a migrant child. We seek to present the migrant childhood through news articles found in the digital platform Mídia de Migrantes de São Paulo (‘Migrant Media of São Paulo’), which gathers over 100 media outlets that are part of the ‘webdiaspora’ and are produced in the São Paulo state, Brazil. We found approximately 30 articles that discuss childhood, from only three websites. The article concludes that even in publications focusing on community communication, migrant children remain underrepresented.

scholarly journals A Scoping Review of the Health of African Immigrant and Refugee Children

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 3514
Author(s):  
Bukola Salami ◽  
Higinio Fernandez-Sanchez ◽  
Christa Fouche ◽  
Catrin Evans ◽  
Lindiwe Sibeko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Risks ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Migrant Children ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Parasitic Infections ◽  
Endocrine Disorders ◽  
African Immigrant ◽  
African Migrant ◽  
Immigrant And Refugee

Migration is a growing phenomenon around the world, including within the African continent. Many migrants, especially African children, face challenges related to health and social inclusion and can face increased health risks. A systematic scoping review of available literature on the health of African migrant children across the globe was conducted to offer insight into these health risks. The review was conducted over a 15-month period from January 2019 to April 2020, yielding 6602 articles once duplicates were removed. This search included electronic databases, reference lists of articles reviewed, and searches of libraries of relevant organisations. A total of 187 studies met the inclusion criteria, of which 159 were quantitative, 22 were qualitative, and 6 used mixed methods. The findings reveal decreased health in this population in areas of nutrition, infectious diseases, mental health, birth outcomes, sexual and reproductive health, physical and developmental health, parasitic infections, oral health, respiratory health, preventative health, endocrine disorders, health care services, and haematological conditions. The findings offer insights into factors influencing the health of African immigrant and refugee children. Further studies, especially qualitative studies, are needed to determine barriers to service access after migration and to investigate other underexplored and overlooked health concerns of African migrant children, including pneumonia and child maltreatment.

How language environment, age, and cognitive capacity support the bilingual development of Syrian refugee children recently arrived in Canada

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 1255-1281
Author(s):  
Johanne Paradis ◽  
Adriana Soto-Corominas ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
Alexandra Gottardo
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Environment Factors ◽  
Syrian Refugee ◽  
Reasoning Skills ◽  
Bilingual Development ◽  
Language Environment ◽  
Nonverbal Reasoning

AbstractResearch on the bilingual development of refugee children is limited, despite this group having distinct characteristics and migration experiences that could impact language development. This study examined the role of language environment factors, alongside age and cognitive factors, in shaping the Arabic as a first/heritage language and English as a second language of recently arrived Syrian refugee children in Canada (N = 133; mean age = 9 years old; mean family residency = 23 months). We found that Arabic was the primary home language with some English use among siblings. Children did not engage frequently in language-rich activities in either language, especially not literacy activities in Arabic. Parent education levels were low: most had primary school only. Hierarchical regression models revealed that stronger nonverbal reasoning skills, more exposure to English at school, more sibling interaction in English, more frequent engagement in language-rich activities in English, and higher maternal and paternal education were associated with larger English vocabularies and greater accuracy with verb morphology. Arabic vocabulary and morphological abilities were predicted by older age (i.e., more first/heritage language exposure), stronger nonverbal reasoning skills and maternal education. We conclude that proximal environment factors, like language use at home and richness, accounted for more variance in the second language than the first/heritage language, but parent factors accounted for variance in both languages.

scholarly journals Mental health service use among migrant and Swedish-born children and youth: a register-based cohort study of 472,129 individuals in Stockholm

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ester Gubi ◽  
Hugo Sjöqvist ◽  
Karima Viksten-Assel ◽  
Sofie Bäärnhielm ◽  
Christina Dalman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Service Use ◽  
Migrant Children ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Mental Health Service Use ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Hazard Ratios ◽  
Migrant Youth ◽  
Majority Population ◽  
Migration Type

Abstract Purpose Migrant children underutilize mental health services (MHS), but differences according to age, reason for migration, type of problem, and time have not been thoroughly analyzed. We aimed to explore utilization of MHS among migrant children and youth and to study if the hypothesized lower utilization could be explained by fewer neurodevelopmental assessments. Methods A cohort of the population aged 0–24 years in Stockholm, comprising 472,129 individuals were followed for maximum 10 years, between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2015. We categorized individuals as accompanied refugee migrants, unaccompanied refugee migrants and non-refugee migrants, or Swedish-born. We used survival and logistic analyses to estimate rates of utilization of MHS. Results Migrant children and youth utilized less MHS than the majority population, with hazard ratios ranging from 0.62 (95% CI: 0.57; 0.67) to 0.72 (95% CI: 0.69; 0.76). Refugee and non-refugee children utilized less mental health care than their Swedish peers, apart from the youngest refugees (0–10 years) who had similar utilization as Swedish-born. The lower rates were partly explained by all migrant youths’ lower risk of being diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental condition. Time in Sweden had a major impact, such that unaccompanied refugee minors had a higher utilization in their first 2 years in Sweden (OR: 3.39, 95% CI: 2.96; 3.85). Conclusion Migrant youth use less MHS compared with native-born peers, and this is partly explained by fewer neurodevelopmental diagnoses. Strengthening the awareness about unmet needs, and the referring capacity by professionals in contact with migrant children could help reduce barriers to care.

Immigrant and Refugee Children in Canada

1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morton Beiser ◽  
Rene Dion ◽  
Andrew Gotowiec ◽  
Ilene Hyman ◽  
Nhi Vu
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Migrant Children ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Successful Adaptation ◽  
Immigrant And Refugee

In view of Canada's commitment to immigration, understanding the sources of successful adaptation by immigrant and refugee children is vital. This paper reviews the literature on the mental health of migrant children and suggests an agenda for future research.

scholarly journals Heritage Tagalog Phonology and a Variationist Framework of Language Contact

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 201
Author(s):  
Pocholo Umbal ◽  
Naomi Nagy
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Heritage Languages ◽  
Mixed Effects Modeling ◽  
Sources Of Variation ◽  
Using Data

Heritage language variation and change provides an opportunity to examine the interplay of contact-induced and language-internal effects while extending the variationist framework beyond monolingual speakers and majority languages. Using data from the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Project, we illustrate this with a case study of Tagalog (r), which varies between tap, trill, and approximant variants. Nearly 3000 tokens of (r)-containing words were extracted from a corpus of spontaneous speech of 23 heritage speakers in Toronto and 9 homeland speakers in Manila. Intergenerational and intergroup analyses were conducted using mixed-effects modeling. Results showed greater use of the approximant among second-generation (GEN2) heritage speakers and those that self-report using English more. In addition, the distributional patterns remain robust and the approximant appears in more contexts. We argue that these patterns reflect an interplay between internal and external processes of change. We situate these findings within a framework for distinguishing sources of variation in heritage languages: internal change, identity marking and transfer from the dominant language.

Nativist versus constructivist goals in studying child language

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 459-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
NAMEERA AKHTAR
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Child Language ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Development Change ◽  
Linguistic Ability ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
Continuity Assumption ◽  
Innateness Hypothesis

Crain & Thornton (1998: 5) are admirably clear in stating the aims of their research programme: they ‘hope to convince a greater number of students and researchers in child language of the correctness of the Innateness Hypothesis and the theory of Universal Grammar’. As Drozd notes, however, their assumptions under Modularity Matching ‘set the stage for a research programme unlike those typically adopted by developmental psycholinguists’. Whereas C&T are avowedly committed to the continuity assumption (clearly preferring ‘special nativism’ over ‘general nativism’; O'Grady, 1997), constructivists are more interested in the question of how children ‘get from here to there’ (Tomasello, 2003) – that is, from immature levels of language comprehension and use to adultlike levels (and, it is important to note that adultlike levels are not always characterized in generativist terms). Most constructivists are also committed to studying the relations between language development and other simultaneously developing social and cognitive skills (Clark, 2003), whereas nativists tend to be interested in ‘pure’ linguistic ability uncontaminated by nonlinguistic influences. The main goal of nativists then is to verify a specific theory of linguistic competence that suggests that linguistic knowledge is innate and modular and to account for children's linguistic development in terms of UG, whereas the main goal for constructivists is to account for development (change) in the child's language system (beginning from perhaps no predetermined linguistic knowledge) and how it relates to other aspects of development. It is this fundamental difference in goals that makes one quite pessimistic that constructivist and nativist researchers in syntactic development can learn anything from one another; they are simply engaged in separate tasks.

Fated to be Orphans: The Consequences of Australia's Post-War Resettlement Policy on Refugee Children

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 224-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Agutter
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Migrant Children ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Migrant Child ◽  
Child Placement ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Work Contract

Between 1947 and 1953, Australia received over 170,000 Displaced People from Europe including widows and unmarried mothers. These refugees were expected to conform to the policies and expectations of the State, in particular the adherence to a 2-year work contract. This was an impossibility for many mothers who could not find work or accommodation outside of the government supplied migrant accommodation centres, and who, as a consequence, resorted to placing their children, either temporarily or permanently, in institutions or for adoption. Through an examination of archival documents, this paper examines the policies that resulted in migrant child placement and adoption and considers the role played by Department of Immigration social workers. It asks why, when migrant children were considered amongst the most desirable of new arrivals, were many fated to become orphans?

scholarly journals The role of socioeconomic, cultural, and structural factors in daycare attendance among refugee children

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-77
Author(s):  
Christoph Homuth ◽  
Elisabeth Liebau ◽  
Gisela Will
Keyword(s):  
Educational System ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Preschool Education ◽  
Migrant Children ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
Daycare Centers ◽  
And Migration

Previous research has found that ethnic educational inequalities arise even before children enroll in primary school. It has been shown that especially for migrants, early participation in education has a positive impact on later educational outcomes, with the acquisition of the host-country language being one of the main mechanisms driving this effect. With the influx of over one million refugees into Germany in recent years, the integration of migrant children, especially refugee children, into the educational system is more salient in educational politics than ever. The first empirical findings on early and preschool education among refugees have shown that while a considerable share of refugee children attend a daycare center, they do so at lower rates than native and other migrant children. This paper aims to examine whether inequalities in the early education of refugee children can be explained by diff erent socioeconomic and migration-related factors known to be associated with inequality in daycare attendance and to explore whether additional refugee-specific factors aff ect the likelihood of enrollment in preschool education. With data from the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees in Germany and the study Refugees in the German Educational System (ReGES), we show that conventional explanatory variables do affect refugee children’s attendance of daycare centers. In addition to children’s age, the employment status of the mother, and the length of stay in Germany are particularly important. However, we see regional differences in participation in preschool education that cannot be explained by the municipal childcare supply.

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