"5 minutes remaining."

The thing is, why can't you just say 'There are 5 remaining minutes'? There must be something else involved.

Travis, I'm not sure what the copula and placeholder subject are, so I won't comment on them.

The copula is simply the verb "to be"; the reason why this term is used is that in many languages, similar verb-like words behave differently grammatically than normal verbs (besides just being conjugated irregularly in many cases). As for the placeholder subject, it is simply "there" in this case, which exists more to take the place which a normal subject would usually take; note, though, that "it" can also act as a placeholder subject in English in many places as well.

remaining is the gerund. I would say that it is correct , even without the verb part "are".

>>remaining is the gerund. I would say that it is correct , even without the verb part "are".<<

In this usage, it is not a gerund but rather a present participle. Note that Old English, in the progressive constructions that developed in it, the present participle, marked with "-ende" in OE, was used, rather than the gerund ending -"ung" or -"ing". The progressive in Middle English also used "-inde", "-ende", or other variations thereon.

Also consider that English dialects may marginally distinguish gerunds and present participles today by being more willing to end present participles with /In/ (which developed from the OE ending "-ende") rather than /IN/ (originally the OE gerund ending "-ing") than gerunds proper; as many dialects may frequently use the ending /In/ with progressive forms even if they only rarely use it with gerunds, it is most likely that the underlying grammatical form being used in such positions is a present participle rather than a gerund per se.

So, Travis, what do you think on what Aquatar said:
'There's some food left over from the party' is basically saying 'There's some food, WHICH IS left over from the party', but of course we tend not to say it that way.'

Is he right or wrong? I think he's wrong and the first sentence (which is an example from Cambridge online) is complete, there is nothing omitted in it.

"Five minutes are left." might be shortened to "Five minutes left."
"There are five minutes left." could also be shortened to "Five minutes left."
If you were to say "Five minutes left.", what would spring to my mind is "There are five minutes left."
Perhaps it doesn't really matter too much which seeing as they both pretty much mean the same thing.

As for "There's some food left over from the party.": I'm sticking ot my guns here. Nothing is missing, it's a complete sentence as it is.

"He touched the door open wide." means that he touched the door and that this caused the door to open wide. We wouldn't often speak like this.

>>So, Travis, what do you think on what Aquatar said:
'There's some food left over from the party' is basically saying 'There's some food, WHICH IS left over from the party', but of course we tend not to say it that way.'

Is he right or wrong? I think he's wrong and the first sentence (which is an example from Cambridge online) is complete, there is nothing omitted in it. <<

Things like these, where relative or interrogative pronouns combined with the copula in relative clauses are omitted in no fashion make a sentence "incomplete"; rather, these are simply alternate forms which exist alongisde the forms using relative or interrogative pronouns and the copula in such positions.

Considering the following sentences:

"He touched the door, which is open wide" could be contracted to "He touched the wide-open door" but not "He touched the door open wide". Similarly "There is some food, which is left over from the party" might be better contracted to "There is some left-over food from the party", but it is unambiguous (and therefore implicitly correct) to contract to "There is some food left over from the party". Not sure if this answers your question.

"Five minutes remaining" is a contraction of "There are five minutes remaining". The french would use (I think, corrections welcome) "Il reste cinq minutes", which literally means "There remains five minutes".

Note also in the above "left-over" is usually simply "leftover".

1.The sentence "There is some food left over from the party" is taken from Cambridge online, where it serves as an example of "LEAVE" :"If something leaves something else, a part or effect of it stays after it has gone or been used:"

2. The sentence "He touched the door open wide"
is (slightly changed by myself, maybe clumsy) the phrase from the book:
"...as she stood on one foot, and with the other hooked the French windows open wide." (Ian McEvan)

<< 2. The sentence "He touched the door open wide"
is (slightly changed by myself, maybe clumsy) the phrase from the book:
"...as she stood on one foot, and with the other hooked the French windows open wide." (Ian McEvan) >>

This doesn't work because touching just refers to the contact between, say, your hand and the door. You can touch something all day and it won't move, unless you do some other action -- you push, pull, shove, prod, throw or nudge a door open, but you don't touch it open. You can also do something to keep it from closing, such as hooking, propping or holding it open.

It's not usual but I wouldn't say that it simply doesn't work. It's a bit of a liberal use of the word but people do use these things, words, liberally.

As a native english former IT guy I can tell you why the statement "5 Minutes remaining" is used. I cannot tell what rules of english grammer it does not follow but I can tell you possible reasons why.

1) It is a simple way to say that fact in the context of a computer display. The enviroment is limited so context is limited. It is probably unambiguous.

2) A lot of people who write this sort of thing are not trained as a "professional" English user. They probably will not waste time making sure a message like that follows strict rules of English grammer.

3) Limited space. A system/application message must be readable in as many screen resolutions as possible. It might be read by people with poor reading skills. It may have to be localized to other languages. A long system message may be more difficult to translate. When a screen is displaying at a low resolution will you be able to see a long message?

4) Computers have a history of using system/hardware/OS specific language. Most computer people I know tend to drift off into "Geekspeak" in computer related conversations. They may or may not know that are breaking rules of grammer and "HEY, I can understand it... why can't you?" permeates the field.

Without knowing more about the context of the message "5 minutes remaining" I cannot GUESS too much more. : )

I will make the observation English is pretty loose about alerts. And usually does not require specific counters and can at times ignore verbs.
Compare and contrast this with the Japanese language. The numeral requires showing the meaning by number and unit character. The unit character varies with object word.

Ah, that's right -- you can't just say "Track One" in a Japanese train station ("[track] ichi"), you have to say "ichiban".