Can I use "here" as depicted in the question?

Question

I can write a simple sentence such as:

A hotel is there in the middle of the Thor desert in India.

Slightly rearranging I can write:

There is a hotel in the middle of the Thor desert in India.

As far as I can see both of them are correct. Now can I use as extra "here", if the speaker is from a nearby area of the desert, in the sentence as used in the following:

There is a hotel here in the middle of the Thor desert in India.

Is using here making sense and is it grammatical as well?

Also will it make more sense if I add "situated" like There is a hotel situated in the middle of the Thor desert in India. ?

Answer 1

All three sentences are grammatically correct, but they're not all the same. In the first one,

A hotel is there in the middle of the Thor desert in India.

the speaker/writer isn't in the middle of the Thor desert. And although it's grammatically correct, it's probably not the optimal way of using existential "there".

In the second one,

There is a hotel in the middle of the Thor desert in India.

the speaker/writer may or may not be in the middle of the Thor desert. It is, however, the normal way of using existential "there": at the beginning of the sentence.

In the third one,

There is a hotel here in the middle of the Thor desert in India.

the speaker/writer is in the middle of the Thor desert in India, and adding the here emphasizes that point. If that's what you want to focus on -- your presence there in the middle of that desert at the time of writing or speaking -- that's fine.

In the fourth one,

There is a hotel situated in the middle of the Thor desert in India.

all you've done is inserted a pleonasm, a verbosity, an unnecessary word. Hotels don't fly or crawl or trot through the desert the way birds, snakes, and camels do. Therefore, they are always situated/located wherever they are. That the hotel is situated in the middle of the Thor desert in India is already clearly stated by the locative preposition "in" and the phrase "in the middle of..."

MW onlnine gives this example sentence: "They decided to situate the new office building near the airport." My personal opinion is that this is a poor word choice. It should most likely be "build", but because the direct object is "building", someone thought "situate" was better for the sound; it could have been "erect" or "construct".

Macmillan online gives these examples: "This modern three star hotel is situated close to the city center." and "The Business Library is situated on the ground floor."

All these sentences are grammatical, and the structure is used, but that doesn't mean that it's optimal or good style. If you delete the word situated, the sentence means the same thing and sounds better because it doesn't have that unnecessary word.

Answer 2

For your first sentence (A hotel is there...) and your third sentence (There is a hotel here...), there and here are respectively used to indicate a location that either (a) has specifically been identified earlier in a written text, or (b) is gesturally indicated (pointing, etc.) at the time of the spoken statement; in the context of your sentences, such a gesture would probably be pointing a map, and there would often indicate a location farther away from the speaker, and here a location closer to the speaker.

In both your second and third sentences, there functions as a pronoun, and is sometimes called a "dummy subject" (the terms pronoun and dummy subject are both contested; unfortunately, you will find many other terms to define there's grammatical function in such sentences), used to introduce what exists; the actual subject is the complement found after the verb. For example, in both your second and third sentences, the actual subject is a hotel.

Adding situated to any of these sentences is grammatically correct, and quite formal, but in my opinion does not add any helpful, extra meaning.