Opiniatrety

We put all four possible sentences on the blackboard in my friend's apartment, and decided that we like the "but" forms better regardless of who the cookie was made for.

We do however prefer "I made me a cookie and you eated it" to "I made you a cookie and I eated it."

Yes, the real question may be why "I made you a cookie and I eated it" is so dispreferred. I do think that "I made me a cookie and you eated it" is funnier than "but," but it's very hard to tell why.

Perhaps "I made me a cookie and you eated it" suggests that this is just the sort of thing you would do, you selfish hu-man.

I can't figure this out, but I thought I would report a further intuition I had about this case. (And it maybe sort of goes along with Matt's 6:01 comment.)

The "and" cat looks angry, while the "but" cat looks sad/ remorseful. My intuition is that if the image was the sad-looking cat, then "I made me a cookie but you eated it" would be better than "and" -- though with the angry-cat picture, "and" is better. "But" somehow seems to be more appropriate to expressing regret than "and", or something like that.

Actually I think the capitalization ("I made me a cookie. AND YOU EATED IT") is semantically important and should not have been omitted.

My intuition for "I made you a cookie but I eated it" is that "I made you a cookie" would normally be followed by "and here it is" or "and it's in the cookie jar" (and note the possibility of a cookie conditional, "if you want it"). So the "but" serves the purpose of cancelling that expectation.

Possibly related: "I made you a cookie..." conveys information but "I made me a cookie..." doesn't. Well, perhaps it conveys information about the origin of the cookie.

It seems that the stress would fall on a different word in the various alternatives: "but" is always stressed, while "and" is not stressed but the antecedent (? subject?) is:

1. I made you a cookie but I eated it.
2. I made you a cookie and I eated it.
3. I made me a cookie but you eated it.
4. I made me a cookie and you eated it.

At least, that's how I hear it. Using "and," the contradiction-of-expectation comes later in the sentence. In sentence 4, the stress on "you" is metaphorically pointing the finger at the culprit - of all the cookie-eaters in the world, you ate my cookie. (Yes, I know, cats don't have fingers. That's why it's a metaphor.)

Ben

P.S. Can I have a taste of your ice cream cone?

I disagree about the intonation -- when I say these sentences I come down as hard on "and" as on the words after it. And there's textual support too, since all those words are capitalized.