Three types of verbal performances are proposed here. They show that speech precedes thought and often shapes it. They also underline the utterly concrete and material dimensions of human activities involved in speech: separate syllables as well as melodic intonations of a whole sentence unfolding, prosodic accents as well as regional ones, and what is physically left once the word has been spoken. These items of a word “Preceding the Language” are analyzed here in a specific manner since it deals with the concept of language itself.