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Came across this sentence in a memoir and I have a grammar question about it.
For context, a person is thinking about someone sleeping nearby:

> さっき声をかけてきたヤツは当分寝ないだろ。残るは寝ているか寝ていないかわからない隣の隣。

Regarding 「残るは」, is this a set phrase or expression? It's not a nominalized
verb, as far as I can tell, as those typically possess the particle の, or こと.
And I've seen it pop up in other things I've read. I understand the general
meaning as:

> The guy who spoke up earlier won't be asleep for some time. That leaves the
> guy next to him（隣の隣）, who I'm not sure is asleep.

Yet why is 残る left with は, as opposed to こと or の? Is it functioning in a
similar way to には after a verb, whereby it doesn't need to be nominalized with
こと or の? Given the very modern context of the memoir I'm not convinced it's a
case of classical Japanese slipping in, but it _might_ be a fixed expression
used more generally in certain situations? It's hard to say.
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2019-02-12T23:39:56.267
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2019-02-16T03:36:58.850
2019-02-13T12:13:22.683
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question
particles verbs nominalization
Meaning of「残るは」in a sentence
For me this sounds like a shortened version of "残るのは"。 Usually the noun form
of "残る" would be "残り" or "残るのは" etc, so this would be a rather rare(old-
fasioned) and literal expression. According to the "related post" below, this
nominalization occurs in limited cases (most often in a proverb).

Similar expression might be "逃げるは恥だが役に立つ", here "逃げる" is a noun meaning "to
run away", which is normally expressed as "逃げること" or "逃げるの". There is also a
saying "聞くは一時の恥、聞かぬは一生の恥", meaning, asking is a shame for the moment, and not
asking is a shame for lifetime. (Although it is different, in a sense, "残る"
here means the one remaining and "聞く" means the action of asking. )

I don't have an answer for whether this expression is similar to "には", sorry
about that.

related post in Japanese:
<https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q12169436772>
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2019-02-13T04:07:20.360
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2019-02-13T04:07:20.360
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answer