Artificial

We tested the influence of connectives on the grammatical role of continuations (subject or object) and the referential form of continua-tions (name or pronoun). We factor out verb semantics by using nonsense transitive verbs followed one of three connectives, because, so and but. We found an unexpected general tendency for object continuations. Object continuations were significantly more likely with but and so compared to because. Because was also significantly more likely to be followed by a pronoun than a name compared to but. We also found evidence that grammatical role expectations do not interact with referential form choice. Likelihood of reference: connectives without verb semantics Verb semantics influences the likelihood of subsequent refer-ence to verbal arguments. Consider the verb like (1). (1) a. JohnExperiencer likes BillStimulus because he...(preferred continuation: he = Bill) b. JohnExperiencer likes BillStimulus so he (preferred continuation: he = John) The subject of like has the semantic role of Experiencer, while the object is the Stimulus. Like and similar verbs belong t