Semileptonic decays of charmed mesons in the effective action of QCD

Within the framework of phenomenological Lagrangians we construct the effective action of QCD relevant for the study of semileptonic decays of charmed mesons. Hence we evaluate the form factors of D -> P(0^-) l^+ nu_l at leading order in the 1/N_C expansion and, by demanding their QCD-ruled asymptotic behaviour, we constrain the couplings of the Lagrangian. The features of the model-independent parameterization of form factors provided and their relevance for the analysis of experimental data are pointed out.