This paper investigates whether instruction about phonological correspondences between the native and a closely related language contributes to the intelligibility of this closely related language. Previous research has shown that closely related languages can be mutually intelligible to a certain degree (cf. Gooskens, 2007). Little is known about methods for improving the intelligibility of a closely related language. In this paper we focus on improving the intelligibility of spoken Frisian for Dutch speakers. In a 50-minute instruction session, participants got information about the most frequent sound correspondences between Dutch and Frisian, e.g. /sk/ in Frisian is often /sx/ in Dutch. The results of the intelligibility test show no significant improvement, neither at the text level, nor at the word level. Further research could focus on other language combinations, but also on a longer time span of intervention and other linguistic factors, such as unknown vowels.

German free relative constructions allow for case requirement mismatches under two types of circumstances. The first is when the case required in the embedded clause is more complex (nom < acc < gen < dat) than the case required in the main clause, and the relative pronoun takes the form of the embedded clause case. The second type of circumstance is when the form that corresponds to the two required cases is syncretic. I propose an analysis that combines Caha's (2009) case hierarchy in Nanosyntax with Van Riemsdijk's (2006a) concept of Grafting. By placing case features as separate heads in the syntax, a less complex case can be Grafted into a different clause, explaining the first type of circumstance. The second type makes reference to the fact that syncretic forms are inserted via the same lexical entry (Superset Principle). A cross-linguistic comparison shows that it is language-specific whether a more complex case requirement in the main or embedded clause causes non-matching non-syncretic free relatives to be grammatical. For all languages it holds that the relative pronoun appears in the most complex case required, which provides additional evidence for case being complex and more complex cases being able to license less complex cases.