diff --git a/SentEval/senteval/sts.py b/SentEval/senteval/sts.py
index a4df049..8c0e415 100644
--- a/SentEval/senteval/sts.py
+++ b/SentEval/senteval/sts.py
@@ -39,8 +39,8 @@ def loadFile(self, fpath):
             not_empty_idx = raw_scores != ''
 
             gs_scores = [float(x) for x in raw_scores[not_empty_idx]]
-            sent1 = np.array([s.split() for s in sent1])[not_empty_idx]
-            sent2 = np.array([s.split() for s in sent2])[not_empty_idx]
+            sent1 = np.array([s.split() for s in sent1], dtype=object)[not_empty_idx]
+            sent2 = np.array([s.split() for s in sent2], dtype=object)[not_empty_idx]
             # sort data by length to minimize padding in batcher
             sorted_data = sorted(zip(sent1, sent2, gs_scores),
                                  key=lambda z: (len(z[0]), len(z[1]), z[2]))