preverbal

adj

1. (not-comparable)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.”

2. (not-comparable)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.”

noun

1. A preverb.