Can I omit there in the following question:
How much juice is there in the bottle?
When is it possible to omit there in a sentence?
Any references to grammar sources are welcome and expected.
The short answer is, Yes you can omit there from the sentence "How much juice is there in the bottle?" without altering its substantive meaning. Though I haven't been able to find a reference work that addresses a specific example where there appears midway through the sentence, as it does in the OP's example, this is clearly an instance of what (in comments beneath the OP's question) John Lawler calls "there-insertion" and what F.E. terms "existential 'there.'" Other authorities use other terms for the same grammatical phenomenon, as Kenneth Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard English (1993) observes:
Jeffrey Kaplan, English Grammar Principles and Facts, second edition (1995) adopts F.E.'s terminology:
R. W. Pence & D. W. Emery, A Grammar of Present-Day English, second edition (1963) offers this analysis [internal citations omitted]:
Transforming Pence & Emery's example sentence into a question, we get "How many right ways are there [always] to do a thing?"—which clearly possesses same basic pattern as the OP's "How much juice is there in the bottle?" We might conclude that the rhetorical rationale for there in questions of this form is that they appear in anticipation of an answer of the form "There is [or are] ..."
Nevertheless, the substantive content of "How much juice is there in the bottle?" is no greater than the substantive content of "How much juice is in the bottle?"—and the same is true of the answer "There is a pint of juice in the bottle" versus the answer "A pint of juice is in the bottle."
I believe the two sentences say two slightly different things. The fist sentence:
Seems to ask, "how much juice is present" in an implied location, and then clarifies where by adding "in the bottle." I believe this sentence would normally be used in a context where both speakers have a mutual of understanding the object in question (like when the listener is holding the bottle), and the speaker simply adds the "in the bottle" part for more clarity.
The second sentence on the other hand:
Seems to ask the question more directly. Here, I believe the speaker does not assume that there are any innate situational/contextual clues, and thus states the question with maximum clarity right of the bat.
If I were the one speaking these things, I would say the first sentence if I began talking to someone who was looking at the bottle, "How much juice is there?" But then suddenly realized that they weren't actually paying attention, and clarified, "in the bottle."
I would say the second sentence if the bottle was not directly in the line of sight, or if the listener was doing something else (so that the presence of the bottle were not on his mind).
If you disagree, please let me know in the comments as I am curious about this question too! :)
In the sentence you provided as an example, you can omit there because it's redundant. If it had been
then it would be necessary. It would be similar to saying
The he is redundant and would only be useful for effect (to evince folksy charm, or in a screenplay or a novel where the character speaking is recounting a suspenseful event and the pause and dragging out of the sentence heightens the sense that something bad is coming). Though there may be many others, in all of the cases that I could readily think of in which there could be omitted it was because of a form of redundancy.
I hope that makes sense.
The word there in both contexts apply to the same bottle in the same location and essentially takes up space:
There is no significant difference between these two sentences. If you say something such as:
then you specify a location apart from the bottle, which changes the meaning of the sentence. As a general rule, when the meaning changes upon the inclusion or omission of a word, you should reconsider the change to the sentence. When the meaning doesn't change, it can be safely omitted.
The grammar of there deals more with when you should use it, not when you can omit it. Speaking generally, you should consider omitting there when a more specific subject is available, or replacing there when it is being used as a noun, pronoun, adverb, or an adjective. For example:
Consider re-writing these sentences by replacing there with something more specific, or by removing there entirely:
The word there is most often used in speech as a shortcut and is generally frowned upon in written form.