The principles of classification of head types.

The head of an intonation-group stretches from the first fully stressed syllable (including it) and extends up to the nucleus. The fist fully stressed syllable with which the head begins is often referred to as t h e onset. The head is an optional element, yet, it occurs in a very high proportion of intonation groups.

The head plays an important part in conveying the speaker's attitude and feelings towards the listener, the subject-matter and the situation, in other words, it is relevant for expressing the modal-attitudinal meaning and the emotional colouring of an utterance. Heads vary in respect to overall length: they may consist of one to thirty and more syllables.

The head displays an extremely high variation in pitch and stress pattern. Descriptions and classifications of heads are based on the following major criteria: a) the general contour of pitch movement over the head; b) the pitch movement within each stress-group; c) the distribution of relative prominence among the semantic items in the prenuclear part of an utterance, which is ultimately reflected in the number of full and partial stresses in the head. According to the first criterion head patterns in English are classified into three major types:

1. Descending - the first fully stressed syllable is said on a high pitch, each following fully stressed syllable (i.e. beginning with the second) always begins lower than the preceding stressed syllable

2. Ascending the first fully stressed syllable is said on a low pitch; each following fully stressed syllabic always begins higher than the preceding one.

3. Level - there are no perceptible contrasts in the initial pitch-height of the successive stressed syllables. According to the actual pitch of the syllables the Level head may be of a high, mid and low varieties.

The first and the second criteria taken together produce the following classification of heads:

1. Stepping Heads characterized by an even, unchanging pitch-level over each of the stress-groups

2. Sliding Heads characterized by a downward pitch movement over the stress groups and climbing

3. Scandent Heads with an upward pitch movement over the stress-groups.

According to the 3rd criterion, that of relative prominence distribution, heads can be subdivided in the following way:

1. The onset of the head bears a full stress and all the other semantically important words are given partial stresses to show their smaller prominence, or they may be left altogether unstressed. The whole head in this case produces the impression of a closely knit semantic unit with one peak of prominence in the initial position - one -peak, or compact, head.

2. All the semantically important words are given full stress by the speaker and made equally prominent to the listener. The overall prominence of the utterance increases as a result, and so does the weight of each of the words. The simplest form of this head-type is a double-peak head. More complicated patterns could be called diffuse heads.

3. There are both full and partial stresses in the head (besides the onset). In this mixed type of head semantic prominence is neither compressed (as in the first case) nor distributed evenly (as in the second type); it is focused on several peaks which may occupy any position within the head.

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