preverbal

preverbal adjective: at an early stage of development in which one is not yet able to communicate by means of words.

Adjective

preverbal (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.1989, Anne Fernald, “Intonation and Communicative Intent in Mothers' Speech to Infants: Is the Melody the Message?”, in Child Development, volume 60, number 6, page 1497
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.1974, J. A. Dunn, “Preverbal Position in Coast Tsimshian”, in International Journal of American Linguistics, volume 40, number 1, page 10
- Here, the more general construction is a simple transitive verb construction, such that the preverbal subject is the actor (causer) of the action, and the post-verbal object is the patient of the action.2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Dependency Grammar” (chapter 3), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 85

preverbal (plural preverbals)

plural	preverbals

From pre- + verbal.

What does preverbal mean?: Preverbal means at an early stage of development in which one is not yet able to communicate by means of words.
What part of speech is preverbal?: Preverbal can be an adjective or a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: preverbal (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “preverbal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/preverbal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.