In linguistics, gapping is a type of ellipsis that occurs in the non-initial conjuncts of coordinate structures.
[2] Stripping is viewed as a particular manifestation of the gapping mechanism where just one remnant (instead of two or more) appears in the gapped/stripped conjunct.
The elided material of gapping in all the examples below is indicated with subscripts and a smaller font: In the first sentence, the second conjunct has the subject others, the object rice, but the verb has been 'gapped', that is, omitted.
Many syntacticians take stripping (= bare argument ellipsis) to be a particular manifestation of gapping where only one remnant appears instead of two or more.
The problem concerns the fact that the elided material often does not qualify as a constituent, as many of the examples above illustrate.
The (at least somewhat) acceptable clauses a-d have the elided material corresponding to a catena each time, whereas the clauses e-i are unacceptable each time because the elided material does not correspond to a catena.