Prosodic prominence is an umbrella term encompassing

various related but conceptually and functionally

different phenomena such as phonological

stress, paralinguistic emphasis, lexical, syntactic,

semantic or pragmatic salience, to mention a few.

Due to the high interest prominence has received

from various disciplines, it has been studied from

multiple perspectives (functional, physical, cognitive).

It also has been operationalised and annotated

across different descriptive levels (syllable, word),

based on different scales (categorical, multi-level,

continuous), and measured across a large variety

of signal domains (acoustic, articulatory, gestural).

The present paper offers an overview of the various

perspectives involved and defines a preliminary

roadmap for a better and more unified understanding

of this multi-faceted phenomenon.