In
linguistics,
inversion is any of several grammatical constructions where two expressions switch their canonical order of appearance, that is, they invert. The most frequent type of inversion in English is
subject–auxiliary inversion, where an
auxiliary verb changes places with its
subject; this often occurs in questions, such as
Are you coming?, where the subject
you is switched with the auxiliary
are. In many other languages – especially those with freer word order than English – inversion can take place with a variety of verbs (not just auxiliaries) and with other syntactic categories as well.