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I was just wondering how does one form questions when you use the tense "passato prossimo". Is it necessary that the verb comes first before the subject/doer? Or the syntax doesn't matter? For example, between the 2 sentences below, which one is correct? Or are both sentences accepted?
- Che ha mangiato Paolo?
- Che Paolo ha mangiato?
The problem you are facing here (which is the correct order of words) has nothing to do with the fact you are using the "passato prossimo" to construct the sentence, but with the use of the interrogative pronoun "che" to begin the question. That is, you will have the same problem if trying to write a question beginning with "che" in present or future simple tense, for instance ("Che Paolo mangia?" or "Che mangia Paolo?" / "Che Paolo mangerà?" or "Che mangerà Paolo?").
These kind of questions are called "interrogative parziali" ("partial interrogatives") because you are making a question about some specific part of the sentence. In your example, assuming that Paolo is the subject of the sentence, you are asking about the direct object of the verb "mangiare". As this article of the Enciclopedia dell'Italiano Treccani explains, an "interrogativa parziale" is always introduced by which is called an "interrogative operator" that can be an interrogative pronoun (such as "che" or "chi"), an adverb (such as "come" or "quando") or an adjective (such as "quale"). In English, they are also called wh-questions because most of the interrogative operators begin with "wh-" (who, what, when, where, why, which).
This Treccani article also explains that, if you begin the interrogative sentence with the interrogative operator (as it happens in your example: you begin the sentence with the interrogative pronoun "che") and you want to express the subject of the sentence (and this subject is not the interrogative pronoun), you should usually write this subject at the end of the sentence. The Treccani article makes this example:
Quando è arrivato Marco?
This sentence begins with the interrogative operator "quando" and the subject "Marco" is written at the end. Similarly, the standard way of writting your question would be
Che ha mangiato Paolo?
with the subject "Paolo" at the end of the sentence.
Unlike languages like German and English, in Italian when you have an interrogative clause you do not separate the auxiliary avere from the main one. Hence, the first sentence you write is correct and the second is wrong.
Another correct possibility would be
Paolo che ha mangiato?
There can be cases when the second sentence you propose would be correct, but not when you mean what has Paolo eaten?. One case is the one Arcsn mentions, another one could be when you mean to ask which Paolo has eaten, as in "which among the Paolos", albeit this would be a borderline wrong usage of the determinant che used in place of quale.
As an Italian I would only say:
Cos'ha mangiato Paolo?
Using che is informal and not very correct, like asking
Che fai?
which means
Cosa stai facendo?
But it's almost never written in a question... It could be used in an indirect question, for example in an e-mail among colleagues:
Ditemi che devo fare
When you don't want to be very serious.
This, instead, is totally wrong:
Che Paolo ha mangiato?
