The Freezing Principle in Hungarian polarity, non-polarity and multiple wh-questions

This paper explores how weak erotetic vajon ‘whether, if…at all’ interacts with the interrogative clitic -e ‘QCL’ in polarity questions and with wh-words in non-polarity and multiple wh-questions in Hungarian. Vajon ‘if…at all’, sitting in ForceP, forms an expletive–associate chain with FINP, which hosts the polarity interrogative clitic -e ‘QCL’. Whenever the INT operator forms an OP-variable chain with the interrogative clitic -e ‘QCL’, this chain blocks Long wh-movement out of subordinate clauses. Weak erotetic vajon ‘if…at all’ signals such OP-variable chains. The same holds for subordinate multiple wh-questions, where the INT….wh-word chain blocks the extraction of another wh-word.