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My son Josh and I have come across the terms "gapping" and "ellipsis". Well, I always thought ellipsis was"..." and meant you were reporting information with omissions - but it seems it may also mean 'omitting one or more words, the meaning of which may be deduced/extracted from prior words' (or something like that).
But, it seems not everyone holds the same view - some think they are different, some related etc.

What we have both noticed is that it seems that gapping etc. Happens on "small clauses" ?
Is that correct? If so, visit only on dependant/subordinate clauses, and only the relative kind? (So many names/labels, sometimes for the same thing?)

If we are wrong, can you see where we have gotten it wrong?

Thank you.

Oh, and Josh just asked if the different namemes are to do with what is omitted ( verb, pronoun etc.)?

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There are numerous types of ellipsis that are acknowledged by linguistics. Here are some examples of the various types:

 Gapping
 (1) Should I call you, or <should> you <call> me?

 Stripping
 (2) Should I call you, or <should> Bill <call you>>

 VP-ellipsis (verb phrase ellipsis)
 (3) If I call you, Bill will <call you> too. 

 Pseudogapping
 (4) Bill has been calling me more than he has <been calling> you.

 Answer fragments
 (5) Who has been calling you? -- Bill <has been calling me>.

 Sluicing
 (6) Bill is calling me, but I don't know why <he is calling me>.

 Null complement anaphora
 (6) I am trying to understand this, and you are also trying <to understand this>.

 Comparative deletion
 (7) He drinks more cola than she drinks <cola>. 

 N-ellipsis (noun ellipsis)
 (8) She took the first train, and he took the second <train>.

The pointy brackets indicate the elided words. These eight do not exhaust the list of ellipsis types, but they are the most widely acknowledged. Note that small clauses are not included in this list. To my knowledge, small clauses are not generally taken to involve ellipsis. Here are some examples of small clauses:

 Fred wiped [the table clean]. 

 Susan opened [the window wide].

 Larry calls [you a genius].

The square brackets mark the small clauses. They are called "small clauses" because they are indeed small -- they contain just a subject and a predicate -- and because they lack a verb (no verb appears inside the square brackets). They are not generally considered to involve ellipsis because there is no way to acknowledge elided material, e.g. 

 *Fred wiped [the table to be clean]. 

 *Susan opened [the window to be wide].

 *Larry calls [you to be a genius].

To come more directly to the question, gapping and small clauses are distinct phenomena of syntax. Gapping is widely acknowledged as a type of ellipsis, whereas small clauses are not generally taken to involve ellipsis. So the notion that gapping results in a small clause is not accurate. Ellipsis, gapping, and small clauses are discussed in Wikipedia.

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  • But some linguists would say they're elliptic. Pluralites non ponenda sine necessitate, and we already need ellipsis, so why invent a new category for the remains of yet another deceased clause? Plus, these constructions are quite various. They shot him dead, they buried him alive, and they consider him a criminal are quite different, and calling them "small clauses" (though that is a clever mnemonic name, I must admit) doesn't help explain them.
    – jlawler
    Commented Aug 1, 2014 at 16:08
  • Nice list of gappings, by the way. Some more deletions, ellipses, and other syntactic rules are listed here.
    – jlawler
    Commented Aug 1, 2014 at 16:11
  • Tim Osborne, thank you. Now I have to re visit my notes, as I must have misread/misunderstood something. But your notes are clear and helpful. . Jlawler, wow! That's a lot of information (more reading). Thank you.
    – user4830
    Commented Aug 1, 2014 at 19:36
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    Don't be surprised that you were never taught about this stuff, btw. It's been discovered only since about 1965 and onwards; since it's science, English departments want as little to do with it as possible, which is why your son finds it surprising, too. This is college grammar, about the same level as second-semester calculus -- not that hard, but one needs a lot of previous experience and concepts. Since its existence is never mentioned in Anglophone K-12 education, that means few people ever study it.
    – jlawler
    Commented Aug 1, 2014 at 20:36
  • Jlawlwe, thank you again. We are in the UK' so have key stages and then GCSEs, then college with with A levels (or NVQs if the subject is more hands on (or GNVQs if less academic). And I was beginning to think English had gotten a lot harder, so again, thank you.
    – user4830
    Commented Aug 2, 2014 at 10:38

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