preverbal

At an early stage of development in which one is not yet able to communicate by means of words.

The expressive power of intonation in communication with preverbal infants was a topic of considerable interest in the early literature on language acquisition.

Occurring before the verb in a sentence or expression.

I will attempt to document some recent syntactic (word order) changes involving preverbal noun phrases in the Coast Tsimshian language.

A preverb.