The role of Non-Actuality Implicatures in processing elided constituents

► We describe a novel implicature, the Non-Actuality Implicature (NAI). ► The presence of an NAI increases acceptability of non-matching elliptical sentences. ► The presence of an NAI increases the likelihood of choosing that constituent as an antecedent of an ellipsis. ► The presence of an NAI facilitates reading of sentences with ellipses. ► We present an interpretation of these effects in which the NAI constrains the likely Question Under Discussion (QUD).