ABSTRACT
F. J. Buytendijk published a study on the child's first smile and regards it — like many other authors — as a weak form of laughing. Smiling is not characterized by explosivity, the coarse release of affect. Smiling can initiate laughing or end it; it can replace laughing "but it has its own unalterable characteristics, its own specific propriety; it is a form of expression sui generis." When analyzed biosemiotically as expression of inner adaptation, both the closeness and the difference become clear. The lateral movement of the mouth in smiling, laughing and crying is to be regarded as an inclination and not as a drive. It is a kind of imaginary filling-up as if the lips and the oral cavity are touched by something and are pulled asunder. The smile indicates that the communication partner occupies an inner place in the receiver and enables the beginning of the real communication.
