"The clothes are [i]in[/i] soaking."

[DTheZombie]

So, I was reading about the Early Mod. English Passival and "Middle Voice" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passival#Passival and I remembered something my grandmother had asked me about why, at least in my dialect, one can say "The clothes are in soaking." or "He's in napping." At first I figured it was a (pseudo-[?])applicative verb (ie. "He was outrun"), but I quickly realized it was simply "He's in [the house/there] napping."

This intrigued me because:
a) Why would the noun be dropped, unless it is a (pseudo-[?])applicative verb that is still forming?
b) It isn't all that commonly used (I usually just say "He's napping"), and I've never seen it described in my perusals of English grammar, or, at least I don't remember it if I did, so I feel it's a quirk on its way out and wanted to bring it to people's attention.

Is this a feature found in anyone else's dialect, and, if so, how common is it?
Any other input would also be appreciated.

[Copperknickers]

The construction in 'the house is (a)building' is extremely common in the West country, I assumed it was a variant of that. I've heard it quite a lot among Irish people: there's the Irish construction 'he's after hitting me', which is like a past tense version, though its much more common.

[DTheZombie]

I find it fascinating how many features are shared between American English and Hiberno-English, it makes sense given my (somewhat atrophied) knowledge of US history and the settling of Indiana and so on. I don't remember how long ago exactly but my grandmothers side of the family is Irish so that could have something to do with my English in particular. I had the understanding that the " to be (a)_ing" construction was the predecessor to the "to be _ing" construction in most other English dialects. I was thinking of this more like an applicative way of saying "the clothes are washing in the washer" but I could certainly be over analyzing it.

[Ambrisio]

It does make a strange kind of sense -- after all, English grammar is partly derived from Celtic languages like Welsh, which have the same construction (e.g. mae e yn gweithio).

[Yng]

[citation needed]

The only evidence I have ever seen put forward for this is do-support, which I'm incredibly dubious about - whilst Welsh does have do-support structures they seem to be a relatively recent calque on English/blanket replacement for synthetic forms, rather than appearing in specific contexts like English do-support; likewise Welsh has very long-established periphrastic structures with be + various prepositions, but these are again completely unlike English except superficially.

That said, some English dialects do have significant Celtic substrates. Standard English, though, and English English in general (except maybe Cornwall? don't know enough to say) are both pretty devoid of Celtic influence.

[Nortaneous]

How do Welsh periphrastics work?

[Yng]

Mostly by constructions which can generally diachronically be read as be + preposition + deverbal noun (verbnoun):

Mae hi'n canu
is she=in sing_VN
she is singing

roedd hi wedi canu
was she after sing_VN
she had sung

There is maybe an argument to be made for them influencing the existence of an English present continuous, but Welsh actually lacks this distinction - all present tense forms are periphrastic on this model. Although that said some dialects have a habitual formed with the future tense forms of 'be' and possibly older Welsh (which has a synthetic non-past) had the distinction.

There are forms with 'do', but these are a) a relatively recent innovation replacing forms that were until recently synthetic and b) replace the synthetic forms in all contexts, not just as interrogatives:

nest ti ganu
did 2sg sing_VN
you sang

[Zaarin]

[citation needed]

The only evidence I have ever seen put forward for this is do-support, which I'm incredibly dubious about - whilst Welsh does have do-support structures they seem to be a relatively recent calque on English/blanket replacement for synthetic forms, rather than appearing in specific contexts like English do-support; likewise Welsh has very long-established periphrastic structures with be + various prepositions, but these are again completely unlike English except superficially.

That said, some English dialects do have significant Celtic substrates. Standard English, though, and English English in general (except maybe Cornwall? don't know enough to say) are both pretty devoid of Celtic influence.

In my limited observation, with the exceptions of Hiberno- and Scottish English, the Celtic languages don't seem to have been very influential on their supplanters--be it Brythonic and English, Gaulish and French, Celtiberian and Spanish/Galician, or even the hypothetical Brythonic substrate of Irish.

[sunandshadow]

"The clothes are in soaking." and the similar phrase about napping occur in my dialect and nearby ones. (Pennsylvania, US) The primary ethnic ancestry (and presumably linguistic influence) in this area is Polish and German, less Italian and Irish. Just my personal opinion, but I think the importance of the preposition is that the clothes or the napping person are "put away", "closed up", "can't/shouldn't currently be retrieved". That's why it's "in" rather than "inside". I don't think I could come up with any evidence to support that feeling though.