The conjunction in the sentence 'Harry stood up and objected to the proposal' is said to be asymmetric because that sentence is not equivalent to 'Harry objected to the proposal and stood up'. Considerations of this phenomenon appear to support Grice's thesis that such sentences are interpreted on the basis of the conversational principle that we talk about events in the order in which they occurred; but it turns out that not all cases can be explained on the basis of that principle.