Daniele Franceschi

• PhD in Linguistics
• Professor (Associate) at Roma Tre University

The aim of the present paper is to illustrate the linguistic features of Maritime English (ME) both as a type of specialized discourse in academic and professional sectors and as a vehicular language used to facilitate communication at sea. It is shown that this specific subset of English covers a wide spectrum, ranging from the language of highly...

The aim of this paper is to provide an initial analysis of the semantic relations holding between Anglo-Saxon and Latinate synonyms in present-day English. It is an acknowledged fact that the lexicon of English consists of a basic indigenous vocabulary of Germanic origin with many foreign borrowings especially from French, Latin and Greek. This has...

This paper examines some cases of lexical adaptation and innovation in present-day English resulting from changed communicative needs brought about by the current coronavirus pandemic. The data analysed consists of 15 lexical items retrieved in the NOW Corpus, a web-based collection of newspapers and magazines freely accessible online. The study sh...

This paper provides an initial analysis of continuative aspectualizers from a contrastive English-Italian perspective. The aim is to investigate the areas of overlap and contrast in terms of the lexico-syntactic behaviour and semantic scope of the main continuative verbs in the two languages, i.e., keep, continue, proceed, resume vs. (man)tenere, c...

The fact that languages are living organisms that evolve and vary as a result of different factors, including societal vicissitudes, cultural influences, technological advancements, migration and intercultural communication, among others, requires a continued effort to identify, characterize and represent the new lexical forms and meanings that eme...

The aim of this paper is twofold. It firstly intends to provide an overview of the existing bilingual English-Italian dictionaries of sports and games terminology, in order to illustrate their main features and consider how this area of ESP (English for Special Purposes) lexicography may be improved. In the second part, a hypothetical e-dictionary...

The aim of this paper is to show the existence of regularities in word meaning variation and change between Latinate borrowings in present-day English and their cognates in Italian, such as gross/grosso, lecture/lettura and rumour/rumore. Starting from an original and shared meaning core, the semantics of these etymologically related words has evol...

This chapter aims to provide an initial cross-linguistic and cognitively oriented analysis of aspectual verbs in English and Italian. The focus is on the areas of overlap and contrast between the two languages, with the aim of broadening the theoretical understanding of how they work with respect to these verb types. Certain pairs of aspectualisers...

This article examines the semantic relations between pairs of Germanic and Latinate near-synonyms in contemporary English, such as hug/embrace, isle/island , and brave/courageous , which dictionaries traditionally treat as equivalent in meaning, regardless of context-independent differences between them. These word pairs are challenging for learner...

The aim of this paper is to propose an alternative pedagogical method for teaching physician-patient communication, which integrates traditional ESL/EFL speaking activities with four main techniques employed in Gestalt psychotherapy/counselling, namely the Empty Chair technique, the Making the Rounds exercise, the Exaggeration task, and Empathic Li...

Author/s Daniele FranceschiUniversity of Pisa, Italy ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to show how Medical English teaching materials may be improved by introducing multimodal tasks encouraging a holistic approach to communication. Medical English for Specific Purposes textbooks and coursebooks typically focus on how to speak effectively, but they...

This article investigates the cognitive operations underlying the different uses of four main begin verbs in English, i.e. start, begin, commence and initiate, and the pragmatic implications connected with them. The study follows an analytical approach based on the Lexical Constructional Model and on more general but fundamental assumptions of Cogn...

The present paper provides a corpus-based cognitive analysis of a marginal but productive construction in contemporary English, consist- ing of the Latin particle cum linking nouns/noun phrases (e.g. pub-cum- hotel, mad-scientist-cum-travelling showman) or prenominal modifiers (e.g. philosophic-cum-economic tinge, feverishly readable post-apocalypt...

L’articolo analizza alcune espressioni composte della lingua inglese utilizzate per stigmatizzare, attraverso immagini stereotipate, il comportamento e le abitudini degli italiani. Gli studi precedenti si sono focalizzati sul contenuto del linguaggio offensivo e discriminatorio nei confronti dei vari gruppi etnici, trascurando il livello formale e...

The English Present Perfect (EPP) has been a widely debated issue in linguistics for many decades. It has been analyzed from various theoretical perspectives and with regard to a range of different questions. However, the picture does not seem to be complete yet. The EPP has traditionally been described in terms of its temporal-aspectual properties...