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I know Subject-Verb inversion is the format to form a question.
When we start a question with 'What',
What it means? -improper
What does it mean? -proper
But then, if we start the question with 'Who', where is the subject? Is 'Who' subject?
Who lives there? -looks much better than
Who does live there?
I would appreciate Native speakers' help in understanding Subject-Verb inversion.
The easiest way to understand this problem is to make an in situ question. For an in situ question we don't move the wh- word to the front of the sentence. We leave it in the same place it would be in a normal sentence:
In these in situ questions we do not need any subject auxiliary inversion. Notice also that the question words there are in the same position in those sentences as they will be in the answers:
Now if we make a normal question notice that the wh- word moves to the front of the sentence and we need subject auxiliary inversion:
I only did the first four questions above. Notice that in the fifth example, the in situ question was:
and the answer was:
Now in this in situ question, the wh- word is already at the front of the sentence, because the thing/person we are asking about is the subject of the verb ate. Because we do not need to move the wh- word, we do not need to use subject auxiliary inversion here. The normal question and the in situ question are the same. It does not matter if the wh- word is who or what or which or whose. If the wh- word does not need to move because it is already at the front of the sentence, then we do not need subject auxilairy inversion.
We can see that these words were already at the front of the sentence when we see the answers:
The Original Poster's question
Who lives there?
In this sentence, the word who is the subject of lives. We do not need to move it to the front to make the question. Notice that in the answer, the name of the person comes in the same place as the wh- word:
Because the question word is already at the front of the sentence, we do not need subject auxiliary inversion.
Hope this is helpful!
The difference, as another commenter said, is whether the question word ("what", "who") is also the subject of the sentence, for example:
Who lives here?
In that sentence, "who" is the subject, and it stands for some person, as in the answer "Jack lives here." So "who" gets replaced by "Jack". But in this sentence:
Who do you know here?
the subject is 'you' - you are someone who may know other people here. Then you need the auxiliary verb "do".
It's the same with 'what':
What lives in the river?
"What" is the subject of the sentence. The answer might be "Fish live in the river", so "what" gets replaced with "fish". However, in the sentence:
What does this mean?
The subject is 'this'. Note that this is very close to the way you would make a question like "does this mean anything?".
When you want to use a question word in a sentence that's not a question, then the auxiliary verbs are dropped:
In questions of the type
Who are you?
Who goes there?
with who in subject case or nominative there is no inversion nor use of to do. Who is the subject. It is a special type of question.
