你在那裡工作 and 你住在那裡? (original), zhù means living, zài means where, these two words are not together, they are seperated. In Chinese, each characters has its meaning, but when the words grouping together, it changed its meaning. For example: Shanghai, it is a name of a city in China, if these words seperated, shang means above, and hai means sea. We are not going to translate Shanghai directly. 你在那裡工作 and 你在那裡住? (modified) Grammar: The sentence in English, it is subject, verb, object. In Japanese, it is subject, object, verb. Chinese is similar to both sentence construction. You can put the verb follow by the subject or put it at the end of the sentence. 你住在那裡 or 你在那裡住? both having the same meaning.

Hello cmorrill321, Your question is so good and I love to know the answer as well. It never even occurred to me, yet I am always confused about the sentence order in Chinese and your question is a good example. I asked some Chinese natives and they couldn't answer adequately. I hope someone will be able to give a detailed explanation of the previous.

interseting question.but i`m sorry,i don`t know how to answer you -__-

"ni zhu zai na li"u also can say " ni zai na li zhu" .its ok. and i think chinese is free,people can understand that ur means is ok.

you can say "nǐ zài nǎ lǐ zhù?" ,we can understand it,sb+zài nǎ lǐ +verb is the right grammar,but "nǐ zhù zài nǎ lǐ?" is more often used by Chinese people in daily life,you can see it as a customary usage. forgive my poor English~what a pity,if you understand Japanese,i can explain it in Japanese more well.