"LEFT": to Aquatar from j on "5 minutes remai

When we felt abandoned and nobody had been coming to our rescue
I sent the same question to Englishpage.com Forums. Just today I got a reply from them.
Below is a text of my question and a mentioned reply.

"subject: left

We're having a discussion on Antimoon forum and can't decide who is
right.Can you help us, please?

A says:
1.'5 minutes left' is short for '5 minutes ARE left".


2.'There's some food left over from the party' is basically saying 'There's some food, WHICH IS left over from the party'.

Often in English you can omit the verb in that way'.

J says:
1."There's some food left over from the party" - nothing omitted here.
'5 minutes left' -
if someting omitted here, it's 'there are', not 'are':
'There are 5 minutes left'.

3. If I say 'there is a door wide open '- wouldn't it be the same structure as 'There is some food left over?' or '5 minutes left'?

What I'm trying to say here it's that the 'left' in the examples above is not a verb with 'is' or 'are' omitted, but a past participle which acts as an adjective. Another examples I can think about - 'I found my money stolen' or 'I found my book lost'.
Thank you in advance."

The reply I got:
"Senior Member

Your analysis seemrs to be on target. I think that the use of left as the "past participle which acts as an adjective" is the correct interpretation. The other analysis is strained and produces implied sentences which are, in some cases, semantically different from what the speaker appears to intend.

I hope this helps."

http://www.englishpage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7670

Yes this seems correct -- in these examples, those words are acting as adjectives. For example:

"a door wide open" means the same as "a wide open door"

"some food left over" means the same as "some leftover food"

(note in English that there is an adjective which exisits for this, "leftover", the same way that "everyday" is the adjective form of "every day")

In the case of 5 minutes left, "left" would not be used as the adjective preceding the subject because of confusion with the other meaning of left (the opposite of "right"), but you could say:

"5 minutes remaining" means the same as "5 remaining minutes"