In questions and answers we have one example, perhaps the
canonical one, of what Harvey Sacks has called a "first pair part"
and a "second pair part," that is, a couplet, a minimal dialogic
unit, a round two utterances long, each utterance of the same
"type," each spoken by a different person, one utterance tempor-
ally following directly on the other; in sum, an example of an
"adjacency pair." The first pair part establishes a "conditional
relevance" upon anything that occurs in the slot that follows;
whatever comes to be said there will be inspected to see how it
might serve as an answer, and if nothing is said, then the resulting
silence will be taken as notable--a rejoinder in its own right, a
silence to be heard ( Sacks 1973).

On the face of it, these little pairings, these dialogic units,
these two-part exchanges, recommend a linguistic mode of anal-
ysis of a formalistic sort. Admittedly, the meaning of an utter-
ance, whether question or answer, can ultimately depend in part
on the specific semantic value of the words it contains and thus
(in the opinion of some linguists) escape complete formalization.
Nonetheless, a formalism is involved. The constraining influence
of the question-answer format is somewhat independent of what
is being talked about, and whether, for example, the matter is of
great moment to those involved in the exchange or of no moment
at all. Moreover, each participating utterance is constrained by
the rules of sentence grammar, even though, as will be shown,
inferences regarding underlying forms may be required to appre-
ciate this.

What sort of analyses can be accomplished by appealing to the
dialogic format?

First, there is the possibility of recovering elided elements of
answers by referring to their first pair parts, this turning out to
be evidence of a strength of sentence grammar, not (as might first
appear) a weakness. To the question "How old are you?" the
answer "I am eleven years old" is not necessary; "I am eleven"
will do, and even, often, "Eleven." Given "Eleven" as an answer,
a proper sentence can be recovered from it, provided only that
one knows the question. Indeed, I believe that elements of the

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