These notes underline the importance and interest of the work of Fónagy—a linguist and a semiologist—for practising psychoanalysts. The author has found Fónagy's research on the unconscious aspects of intonation particularly valuable, both theoretically and clinically. Intonation belongs to the earliest moments of the communicative interaction between the baby, the mother and the father. Therefore it is of paramount importance in helping to understand the characteristics of proto-communication and its re-enactment in the transference and countertransference during psychoanalytic treatment. Fónagy's research constitutes a very valuable contribution to a real interdisciplinary approach to the study of proto-communication from a linguistic and psychoanalytic point of view.