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> 冬休{ふゆやすみ}みはどこ [か] 行{い}きましたか.

In the above sentence, I learned [か] can be used to express uncertainty, which
means the person asking this question has no idea if the person being asked
went to some place or stayed at home/school.

And I think [へ] and [に] can also be used here to replace [か], to describe
destination/location, as though we don't care the uncertainty problem. Also, I
somehow think [が] cannot be used here, because it's kind of weird.

Am I right in the above guess, especially [が]?
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2020-06-15T08:52:50.087
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question
auxiliaries
に/へ/が/か in describing place
You are correct about か expressing uncertainty. In this case, the phrase どこか
is an 'indeterminate pronoun' which indicates the presence of something
unknown. どこか can be translated in English as 'somewhere' (or 'anywhere'
depending on the context). Other examples of indeterminate pronouns are 誰か
(someone), 何か (something), どれか (one of...), いつか (some time), etc. The use of
particles (を, で, に, へ, etc) following these words depends on the context.
Sometimes they can be omitted and other times, they cannot. But let's stick to
your example sentence and your specific questions.

In your example, 冬休みはどこ **か** 行きましたか, replacing [か] with either [へ] and [に]
would actually change the meaning of the sentence from "Did you go
**anywhere** during winter break?" to " **Where** did you go during winter
break?". You could not use [が] because verbs of movement (such as 行く) require
the particle に or へ. Finally, you could add [へ] or [に] to make 冬休みは **どこかへ**
行きましたか, which does not change the meaning ([see other examples
here](https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%A9%E3%81%93%E3%81%8B%E3%81%B8)).

Finally, a note about omitting particles following どこか. Sometimes particles
are omitted in casual speech, for example. I searched the BCCWJ corpus for
instances of どこか with 行く (including verbal inflexions). There were many more
instances of どこかへ行く and どこかに行く than どこか行く, with particle omissions often
occurring in quoted speech. In other words, it is more usual to see どこか with a
particle attached. In other cases, you need the particle. For example, with
どこか **で** その広告を見ました, you must include the particle で. So it is context-
dependent.
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2020-06-15T09:33:57.007
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answer