Successful participation in task-oriented, inference-rich dialogs requires, among other things, understanding of specifications implicitly conveyed through the exploitation of parallel structures. Several linguistic operators create specifications of this kind, including “the other way (a)round”, “vice-versa”, and “analogously”; unfortunately, automatic reconstruction of the intended specification is difficult due to the inherent dependence on given context and domain. We address this problem by a well-informed reasoning process. The techniques applied include building deep semantic representations, application of categories of patterns underlying a formal reconstruction, and using pragmatically-motivated and domain-justified preferences. Our approach is not only suitable for improving the understanding in everyday discourse, but it specifically aims at extending capabilities in a tutorial dialog system, where stressing generalities and analogies is a major concern.