The sentence is this one:

> その音に反応したのか、わたしの耳に一つの声が届いた

I kinda understand the connotation that のか has in some sentences, but I just
don't understand it in this particular one.
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2021-04-27T21:23:50.087
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question
grammar particles questions sentence explanatory-の
Meaning of のか in this sentence?
In this sentence, のか means that the speaker is guessing at a cause. To
translate the sentence, "Perhaps reacting to the sound, I heard a voice." Kind
of a gross translation, but essentially the speaker is guessing that the voice
they hear is from someone vocalizing in reaction to the referenced sound.
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2021-04-27T23:21:23.607
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2021-04-28T01:02:29.280
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answer
If you don’t know whether or not whatever uttered the voice did so in response
to the sound, you might say:

> その音に反応した **のか** どうかわからない。

If you suspect it did, you might say:

> その音に反応した **のかも** しれない。

のか in your sentence should be understood along these lines.

In fact, he could have as well said:

> その音に反応したのかもしれない。わたしの耳に一つの声が届いた。

or

> その音に反応したのかもしれないが、わたしの耳に一つの声が届いた。

You wouldn’t be terribly mistaken if you thought of その音に反応したのか as a shorter
conjunctional form of this.

* * *

**[EDIT]**  
Maybe I should add that this conjunction is a causal one, although the speaker
is not completely sure about the cause.
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2021-04-29T09:52:03.393
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answer