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Question: Is どうやって considered to be a single word all to its own (acting as an interrogative adverb?)? Or is it just どう＋やる ("doing + how"), and no different than any other te-form construction?

In the following, it seems to be acting as a single word:

駅までどうやって行きますか。

How can I get to the station?

...since if どうやって were just a て-form construction, then 駅まで would have to be contiguously paired with 行きますか, I think? As in:

(どうやって)(駅まで行きますか)。

as opposed to the way it is now:

(駅まで)(どうやって)(行きますか)。

So the fact that どうやって breaks into 駅まで行きますか makes me think that it is genuinely a single word, and not just どう + the て-form of やる.

Is this correct?

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    Why do you think it must be a single word because it's placed in that position? 駅までどの交通機関を使って行きますか is a completely valid sentence.
    – aguijonazo
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 1:26
  • Is that sentence a conjunction of (駅まで行きますか) and (どの交通機関を使って)? Or put differently: is it equivalent to どの交通機関を使って駅まで行きますか?
    – George
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 6:49
  • 駅までどの交通機関を使って行きますか and どの交通機関を使って駅まで行きますか are asking the same thing with a slight difference in focus. I don’t see why we should see them as a conjunction of anything when we don’t (as I suppose we don’t by your definition) 駅までどの交通機関で行きますか and どの交通機関で駅まで行きますか. That distinction seems totally unnecessary.
    – aguijonazo
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 7:39
  • @aguijonazo: Is it not fair to characterize 「どの交通機関を使って駅まで行きますか」 as a conjunction? It seems to me it is since (i) 使う is in the て-form and (ii) the sentence could be broken up into two separate sentences made from its "conjuncts" (e.g.: 「まで行きます。どの交通機関を使うか。」). Doesn't this make it a conjunction?
    – George
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 17:15

1 Answer 1

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This is literally どう ("how") + やって ("doing", from やる).

Note that Japanese uses どう ("how") in various places where we use "what" in English. For instance, 「どうした？」 is literally "how did [something] do?", as in "how did this current state or situation come about?" Meanwhile, in idiomatic English, we would say "what happened?" instead.

In some cases, どうやって ("doing how") is better rendered as "doing what". In other cases, just "how".

駅までどうやって行きますか。

One way to break this down from an English perspective might be:

駅までどうやって行きますか。
  ↓ (literal)
station until how doing go [QUESTION]
  ↓ (slightly more idiomatic)
How do I do to go to the station?
  ↓ (more idiomatic still, noting that Japanese uses "how" in many places where English uses "what")
What do I do to go to the station?
  ↓ (most natural English)
How do I go to the station?

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  • While this a valid diachronic explanation, I don’t think it begins to tackle the question of whether どうやって is synchronically considered to be a single word by native speakers, which is what the OP was asking. I would expect some felicity tests to answer the latter (which is what the OP was attempting to do, though they got it wrong).
    – Darius Jahandarie
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 2:12
  • I still really appreciate this answer though! I love the successive translations approach (from the more literal, to the more idiomatic).
    – George
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 6:50
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    @DariusJahandarie - Then, I think answers will be opinion-based. I for one would say どうやって is less atomic than どうして in the sense of “why” but no less lexicalized than どうして in the sense of “how”. I just don’t see how this helps learners or why they should worry about whether it’s one word or two.
    – aguijonazo
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 7:45
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    @aguijonazo: Now I that I realize that clauses (via て-forms) can be stuck "in between" other clauses, as in (駅まで)(どうやって)(行きますか), I agree that it doesn't much matter whether どうやって is considered one word or two.
    – George
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 17:15
  • @DariusJahandarie, I've never encountered the term "felicity test" before. What is this?
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 19:46

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