The head in English is an extremely flexible segment. It stretches from the first stressed syllable up to (but not including) the nuclear tone.
Head patterns are classified into three major groups: d e -scending, ascending and 1 e v e 1, the main criterion in each case being how the head begins from the point of view of pitch movement.
1. Descending Heads
In descending heads the voice usually moves down from a medium or high pitch level to the low one; the stressed syllables (usually with intervening unstressed ones) forming a descending sequence. The first stressed syllable of the head is the highest, the following stressed syllables carry the pitch lower.
(a) The syllables can move down by steps. Then the head is called stepping.
In the Stepping Head unstressed or partially stressed syllables are pronounced on the same note as the preceding step, eg:
I Vdon't 'want to 'go to the xcinema. *—••