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John Millhouse published his Corso graduato e completo di lingua inglese in 1842, and a few years later his italian-english, english-italian new Pronouncing and explanatory Dictionary: vol. 1 in 1849, and vol. 2 in 1853. Though the Corso and the Dictionary were not originally meant to be used together by Italian learners of English, Millhouse soon revised his own original pronunciation system, so that both the Dictionary and the Corso would present the same sound keys. This article outlines the explanatory framework of his pronunciation system and analyses the Dictionary’s role in helping students translate from and into English, by comparing selected lexical equivalents, taken from the Corso passages, with their Dictionary equivalents, to highlight (a)symmetries between their contextualized use and their lexicographic treatment.

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This paper deals with the concepts of usage, authority and stance in the field of lexicography, with special reference to the first edition of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (W3), the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and different editions of learner’s dictionaries up to the latest ones. The main aim is to compare and assess different dictionary-making policies and their outcomes on the basis of the more or less overt role played by the interpretations and implementations of the above-mentioned concepts of usage, authority and stance and their interconnections with descriptivism and prescriptivism. Scholarly approaches to the concepts of usage, authority, and stance are presented in section 1 to outline the scientific background to their pervasiveness in dictionary-making policies. The definitions of the words usage, authority and stance given in W3 and in the OED, whose outstanding positions in the lexicographical field are undisputed, are then analysed in section 2. The related definitions of descriptivism and prescriptivism are compared and their application and instantiation are exemplified by the treatment of woman question (as a lexical item) in the OED, as representative of its historical perspective, and of ain’t in W3, as the symbol of its lexicographic breakthrough (section 3). Section 4 focuses on Learner’s Dictionaries and their specific pedagogical role with reference to usage, authority and stance, and on their definitions of ain’t in different editions, to see if that headword has undergone socio-cultural changes in time. A few concluding remarks are offered in section 5.

l'abstract non è previto in questa pubblicazione, ma la prima parte dell'introduzione, riportata di seguito, equivale a un aabstract This contribution analyses the features that allow the conventionalized system(s) used to present and describe different types of information in lexicographic products, in particular English monolingual Learner’s Dictionaries (LDs), to qualify as metalanguage and as a particular form of specialized language. In general, the concept of metalanguage partakes of some of the constitutive elements of specialized language and of terminology, but the linguistic status and the purposes of lexicographic metalanguage present specific metalinguistic features. This article will evaluate differences and similarities in the metalanguages adopted in different editions of three LDs, namely, in alphabetical order, the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary1 (COBUILD); the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE); and the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD). The main aim is to assess the extent to which their descriptive, conceptual and communicative role makes it possible to identify each of their metalanguages as (a) specialized language.

The article describes how the conceptual maps of the thesaurus-like Longman Language Activator (1993, 2002) (LLA) allow semantically related phraseologisms to be identified. It analyses selected idioms and collocations taken from the LLA keyword entries WORK, BRAVE, WIN, and ANGRY that are respectively related to the FRAME-project* semantic fields “people and work”, “people and their behaviour”, “human relations” and “emotions”. The aim is to highlight main differences in their use and to show that the LLA could feature as a primary source of the English phraseologisms to be added to the FRAME database. *(FRAseologia Multilingue Elettronica - Electronic Multilin-gual Phraseology).

Il dizionario di Tarver, The Royal Phraseological English-French, French-English Dictionary, in due volumi (vol. 1, 1845; vol. 2, 1849), pubblicati a Londra, e quello di Millhouse, Dizionario Italiano-Inglese, Inglese-Italiano, anch’esso in due volumi (vol. 1, 1849; vol. 2, 1853), usciti a Milano, hanno visto la luce in anni molto vicini e con obiettivi didattici parzialmente comuni: sono entrambi dizionari bilingui, in entrambi è presente la lingua inglese e sono primariamente rivolti a chi studia, rispettivamente, il francese o l’inglese come lingua straniera. Al contempo sono diversi per struttura e contenuti: il dizionario di Tarver è specialistico, come evidenziato dalla parola ‘phraseological’ fin dal titolo, mentre quello di Millhouse ha scopi generali, anche se è incentrato sulla pronuncia dell’inglese. Le differenze sono in parte dovute ai contesti in cui sono stati prodotti, legati all’insegnamento del francese in Inghilterra e a quello dell’inglese in Italia, e in parte ad approcci linguistico-lessicali e lessicografici più o meno legati alle rispettive tradizioni. La breve analisi delle voci hand e main in Tarver e di hand e mano in Millhouse evidenzia come le modalità di presentazione e di trattamento delle entrate rispondono ai rispettivi obiettivi. Tarver’s Royal Phraseological French-English, English-French Dictionary (vol. 1, 1845; vol. 2, 1849) and Milhouse’s Dizionario Italiano-Inglese, Inglese-Italiano (vol. 1, 1849; vol. 2, 1853) were published at a short distance from each another, respectively in London and in Milan. They are both two-volume bilingual dictionaries which include English, and they partly share their didactic aims: they primarily address learners of French or English respectively as a foreign language. However, their structure and contents differ. Tarver’s dictionary is specialised, as the word ‘phraseology’ shows in the title itself, while Millhouse’s dictionary is a general-purpose one, though with a special focus on English pronunciation. Differences partly depend on their production situational contexts, with reference to French learning in England as opposed to English learning in Italy, and partly on the respective linguistic, lexical, and lexicographic traditions behind their approaches. A brief comparative analysis of the entries hand and main in Tarver’s dictionary and of hand and mano in Millhouse’s one is meant to show if and how their presentation modes and treatment meet their authors’ (and prospective users’) aims.

Il verso di La Fontaine, tratto da Contre ceux qui ont le goût difficile del 1668, è incluso come esergo nel frontespizio e ripetuto come motto ispiratore nella prefazione del secondo volume, francese-inglese, del Royal Phraseological English-French, French-English Dictionary, pubblicato nel 1849, quattro anni dopo il primo volume, inglese-francese. John Charles Tarver, l’autore del dizionario, docente di francese a Eton fin dal 1826, ne ha fatto un’opera innovativa nel panorama della lessicografia inglese-francese dell’epoca, basandosi sulla sua lunga esperienza didattica, sulla padronanza di entrambe le lingue e relative culture e, in particolare, sul riconoscimento del ruolo fondante della fraseologia nell’apprendimento e nell’uso effettivo di una lingua straniera. Al fine di mostrare la rilevanza del dizionario all’epoca e il suo ruolo innovativo, il contributo illustrerà il contesto in cui fu prodotto e analizzerà i tratti salienti delle combinazioni fraseologiche che ne costituiscono l’essenza e la loro modalità di presentazione in voci selezionate da entrambi i volumi., Allegretto Vivace. Omaggio a Bruna Donatelli

Report of the EMLex summer term at Rome 3 University

Predicting mobilization failure before it starts may enable patient-tailored strategies. Although consensus criteria for predicted PM (pPM) are available, their predictive performance has never been measured on real data. We retrospectively collected and analyzed 1318 mobilization procedures performed for MM and lymphoma patients in the plerixafor era. In our sample, 180/1318 (13.7%) were PM. The score resulting from published pPM criteria had sufficient performance for predicting PM, as measured by AUC (0.67, 95%CI: 0.63–0.72). We developed a new prediction model from multivariate analysis whose score (pPM-score) resulted in better AUC (0.80, 95%CI: 0.76–0.84, p < 0001). pPM-score included as risk factors: increasing age, diagnosis of NHL, positive bone marrow biopsy or cytopenias before mobilization, previous mobilization failure, priming strategy with G-CSF alone, or without upfront plerixafor. A simplified version of pPM-score was categorized using a cut-off to maximize positive likelihood ratio (15.7, 95%CI: 9.9–24.8); specificity was 98% (95%CI: 97–98.7%), sensitivity 31.7% (95%CI: 24.9–39%); positive predictive value in our sample was 71.3% (95%CI: 60–80.8%). Simplified pPM-score can “rule in” patients at very high risk for PM before starting mobilization, allowing changes in clinical management, such as choice of alternative priming strategies, to avoid highly likely mobilization failure.

This article analyses different typologies of dictionary criticism, with special reference to reviews of British and American English dictionaries published in Dictionaries and in the International Journal of Lexicography between 1995 and 2015. The main aims are to assess reviewers’ roles and to see if (selected) reviews achieve their two basic communicative goals: to offer information about the dictionary reviewed and advice as to how appropriate it is to the intended/potential users’ needs, and to provide lexicographers with guidelines on how to improve their works. Research questions focus on whether reviewed dictionaries are described, analysed, and recommended (or otherwise) to the reader, and on whether reviews are based on a serious examination and judgment of the reviewed dictionary. Results point to the impartiality and trustworthiness of reviews written by specialists: other types of dictionary criticism unveil social, cultural and ideological factors affecting the dictionary- making process as well as the final product.

Mastering collocations is a marker of communicative competence. Knowing which words work together – and which do not, one might add – is necessary for (advanced) learners to express meaning in a fluent and natural way. To this end, collocations, as transparent, more or less fixed combinations of words, often represent a problematic issue for learners of a foreign language, especially because of the different linguistic ways languages carve and express knowledge and common experience. In the field of English as a foreign language the inclusion and treatment of collocations is one of the main characteristics of general-purpose Learners’ Dictionaries (LDs), especially of more recent, corpus-based editions. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD, 2010, Foreword) “it's not enough to know the right vocabulary - students also have to know which words go together if they want to sound natural”, and according to the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (MED, on-line edition, Introduction) students need information not only about meaning but also about how words combine “to write natural-sounding English”. In a similar perspective and in a considerably more detailed way, specialised Collocations Dictionaries aim at helping learners of English express their ideas “naturally and convincingly” (Oxford Collocations Dictionary (OCD) 2009, back cover) and “write more natural and accurate English” (Macmillan Collocations Dictionary (MCD) 2010, back cover). This paper compares the treatment of some verb+noun collocations in the above-mentioned Dictionaries. The comparison aims at assessing their respective role in helping learners avoid collocational errors. It also envisages the possibility, to be further explored with the active involvement of learners, of connecting the role of collocations as a marker of communicative fluency with languaging, not only as the ability “to express in language, put into words; to tell, to describe, report” (OED, s.v. language verb), but also as “a dynamic, never-ending process of using language to make meaning” and “of shaping knowledge and experience through language” (Swain 2006: 96, 98). Swain further expounds on this concept in a metalinguistic direction concerning “languaging about language”, considered as “one of the ways we learn a second language to an advanced level” (2006: 96), and reports on a number of studies showing how “students were stimulated to language about language because in doing the tasks, they realised that there were things about the target language that they did not know, or were unsure of” (2006: 105). The four dictionaries are thus also analysed to see if while helping learners avoid errors they also engage them in a form of silent ‘languaging’ à la Swain1, in the sense of stimulating an interaction between what students wrongly write and what dictionaries correctly report, hopefully leading to a higher degree of awareness and to improved performance. Among the four dictionaries2 the OALD and the OCD on the one hand, and the MED and the MCD on the other, are supposed to share common sources (corpora) and similar policies regarding the definition of collocations, alongside differently tailored yet partially shared objectives. The analysis of selected entries has been based on verb+object noun collocational errors from ICLE-IT, the Italian component of the Louvain International Corpus of Learner English (Granger et al., 2009, Granger et al., 2002, Prat Zagrebelsky, 2004) as a source to identify learners’ needs. Learners’ verb+object noun productions are considered as collocational errors on the basis of the wrong choice of the verb for the object noun (Martelli 2007: 41). The semasiological approach of the two LDs and the onomasiological approach of the two collocations dictionaries (Coffey 2005) affect their respective macro- and micro-structure, and this partly explains the lexicographical and structural differences in their inclusion and treatment of the selected collocations. Yet, findings show that, alongside overlappings, the entries analysed also reveal differences, probably due to different descriptive approaches, different sources and different notions of use restrictions

Collocations are a major part of phraselogy; independently of terminological aspects, they are a much debated linguistic, theoretical, and lexicographical issue in both English and Italian, because of their pervasiveness on the one hand, and their classification with regard to different types of phraseological units and free combinations on the other. Lexicographically, collocations are included in general dictionaries and in specialised works: crucial policies of definition, inclusion and treatment highlight moot points especially for didactic purposes. In this respect English and Italian monolingual dictionaries of collocations well represent the current development of the long-standing connections between phraseology and both general and specialised lexicography, in particular with reference to pedagogic purposes. The ultimate, long-term aim of the research project this paper is based on is to start laying the foundation for the making of a bilingual dictionary of Italian and English lexical collocations, which would take into consideration the relation between the traditionally normative role of dictionaries and the usage-based, often innovative nature of collocations. The aim of the present paper is to identify convergences and asymmetries in defining and classificatory issues and in inclusion and treatment policies in English and Italian dictionaries of collocations, to see to what extent there is common ground which would be relevant to the above mentioned lexicographical project

Historically, the word phraseology has been connected with lexicography (Knappe 2004), especially with bilingual dictionaries (Moon 2000) and their norm-setting role associated with foreign-language teaching and learning. Nineteenth-century specialised bilingual lexicography seems to depart from the then usual norm-based approaches and to favour the inclusion of use-related phraseological combinations. This paper analyses the treatment of word combinations which can be referred to as ante-litteram collocations in two rather different dictionaries, namely Tarver’s Royal Phraseological English–French, French–English Dictionary (1845–53) and Nutt’s English–Italian Conversation Dictionary (1894), to see to what extent nineteenth-century specialised bilingual lexicography has marked a move away from prescriptivism and affected later studies on the lexicographical treatment of collocation and changes in the use of the word phraseology.

This article is situated at the crossroads between contrastive linguistics and phraseology. Its objective is to show how some characteristic elements of the co-text of supposedly true friends in English and Italian form different phraseological patterns which account for (un)suspected semantic and pragmatic divergences in their use. Some pairs of true friends, which are supposed to share the same meaning and use in the two languages, have been analysed in two broadly comparable corpora. Findings shed new light on the web of linguistic, cultural and pragmatic relations occurring beneath the lexical level: they ultimately explain why the cognate words analysed often turn out not to be translational equivalents of each other. The same corpus-based approach could prove helpful in analysing similar phenomena in other pairs of languages.

We evaluated the safety and efficacy of plerixafor, subsequent to disease-specific chemotherapy followed by granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF), in 37 multiple myeloma (MM) or lymphoma patients, who were candidates for autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) predicted as poor mobilizers (PMs). Patients were identified as predicted PMs according to the history of a previously failed mobilization attempt or the presence of ≥1 factors predicting an unsuccessful harvest, such as advanced disease, prior extensive radiotherapy, or prolonged treatment, with stem cell poisons, advanced age, or extensive bone marrow involvement. Plerixafor (0.24 mg/kg) was administered subcutaneously for up to 3 consecutive days while continuing G-CSF for 9 to 11 hours before the planned apheresis. Plerixafor administration was safe and no significant adverse events were recorded. We observed a median 4-fold increase (range: 1.4-32) in the number of circulating CD34(+) cells following plerixafor compared with baseline CD34(+) cell concentration (from a median of 5 cells/μL, range: 1-32, to a median of 32 cells/μL, range: 6-201). Twenty-seven of the 37 patients (14 of 17 with MM and 13 of 20 with lymphoma) had ≥2×10(6) CD34(+) cells/kg collected in 1-3 apheretic procedures. Of the 27 patients rescued with plerixafor, 24 (13 MM, 11 lymphoma) have been transplanted with plerixafor-mobilized peripheral blood stem cells, showing a rapid and durable hematologic recovery. Our results suggest that the addition of plerixafor to G-CSF after disease-oriented chemotherapy is safe and allows for a satisfactory harvest in order to perform a safe ASCT, in a relevant proportion of lymphoma and MM patients considered to be PMs.

This paper elaborates on the use of the nouns gift and present, and on the linguistic relationships linking them. It also expounds on the morphological and semantic relationships involving the noun present, the adjective present, and the homographic, but not homophonic verb present. The collocational profiles of the nouns gift and present, with reference to the different meanings of the latter, are also considered to identify the connotative aspects of their use and their sematic prosodies. The analysis is carried out on the basis of data from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED, on-line) and from the WordBanks on-line English corpus (WB). These two totally different sources are used to identify the (etymological) linguistic features behind the creative wordplay which involves the words gift and present, as used in an advertisement, to compare their uses and to highlight how the exploitation of linguistic relationships makes manipulations possible and ultimately determines effective communication.

The article surveys the concepts of 'norm' and 'usage' or 'use' from the lexicological and lexicographical perspective, with special reference to the English tradition. It also deals with major findings concerning the use of lexis in the media, with reference to the articles published in the same volume, which it also prefaces, in as far as it accounts for the aims of the national research project bearing the same title and for their achievement.

Forty adults aged 28 to 73 years were entered into a prospective trial of imatinib for the treatment of steroid-refractory chronic graft-versus-host disease (SR-cGVHD). After 6 months, intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis of 39 patients who received the drug, regardless of the duration of treatment, revealed 14 partial responses (PR), 4 minor responses (MR) with relevant steroid sparing (46%) according to Couriel criteria, and 20 ≥ PR (51.3%), as per the National Institutes of Health (NIH) criteria and NIH severity score changes. The best responses were seen in the lungs, gut, and skin (35%, 50%, and 32%, respectively). After a median follow-up of 40 months, 28 patients were alive, with a 3-year overall survival (OS) and event-free survival of 72% and 46%, respectively. The 3-year OS was 94% for patients responding at 6 months and 58% for nonresponders according to NIH response, suggesting that these criteria represent a reliable tool for predicting OS after second-line treatment. Monitoring of anti-platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDGF-R) antibodies showed a significant decrease in PDGF-R stimulatory activity in 7 responders, whereas it remained high in 4 nonresponders. This study confirms the efficacy of imatinib against SR-cGVHD and suggests that the response at 6 months significantly predicts long-term survival.

The paper discusses selected erroneous and questionable verb+noun, noun+verb and adjective+noun combinations taken from the Italian component of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE-IT) (Granger et al., 2002; Granger et al., 2009; Prat Zagrebelsky, 2004), and analyses the treatment of the words they are composed of in The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English (3rd edn., 2009) (BBI), The Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English (2nd edn., 2009) (OCD), and the Macmillan Collocations Dictionary for learners of English (2010) (MCD). To assess their acceptability, learners’ productions are compared with data from the English corpus WordBanks Online and with what is recorded in the BBI, the OCD, and the MCD. The aim is to assess the assistance of these dictionaries in helping learners avoid collocational errors. Given the small number of the combinations analysed, findings cannot be generalised: however, they show that use restrictions are often not signalled in the three dictionaries and that the base-collocate relation should be revised, especially in the case of verb+noun and noun+verb combinations, so as to include both subject and object nouns in verb entries