The Head

Consider the following one-syllable utterance:

those

We can find the same tonic syllable in a long utterance (still of one tone-unit):

'give me hose

The rest of the tone-unit in this example is called the head. Notice that the first syllable has a stress mark: this is important. A head is all of that part of a tone-unit that extends from the first stressed syllable up to (but not including) the tonic syllable. It follows that if there is no stressed syllable before the tonic syllable, there cannot be a head. In the above example, the first two syllables (words) are the head of the tone-unit. In the following example, the head consists of the first five syllables:

'Bill 'called to 'give me these

As was said a little earlier, if there is no stressed syllable preceding the tonic syllable, there is no head. This is the case in the following example:

in an hour

Neither of the two syllables preceding the tonic syllable is stressed. The syllables 'in an' form a pre-head, which is the next component of the tone-unit to be introduced.