Prosody

 1. I am washing a soccer game on tv in Spanish, but I'm getting sleepy so I lay down on the couch and close my eyes, but keep the sound on. Without even listening to the words of the announcer, I know when to sit up and pay attention, by the tone of voice, volume, pitch, velocity of speech to convey excitedness, culminating in the cry of GOOOOOOOOOOOOL.  [PROSODY AS EMOTION[ 

2. I know the difference between a yes-no question and a statement in English, or Spanish, by the way the pitch goes up or down at the end of the sentence. [LINGUISTIC PROSODY] 

3. I say "thanks a lot" with a tone of voice that gives this phrase its opposite meaning [PROSODY AS PRAGMATICS]. 

4. A linguist writes an article about the meter of Shakespeare's sonnets. [PROSODY AS A BRANCH OF LINGUISTICS, USING INSIGHTS FROM BOTH LINGUISTICS AND POETICS.] 

5. A Shakespearian actor recites a soliloquy on stage. There is an awareness of the meter, but also a particular stylized form of trained performance. [PROSODY AS PERFORMANCE]

6.  Bob Dylan sings the phrase "like a rolling stone." He is setting his own words to music, and the particular melody and rhythm of the phrase conveys the exact emotional nuance he wants to convey. It is at once an emotional, a linguistic, a poetic, and a musical use of prosody. [MUSICAL PROSODY IN TEXT SETTING]. 

This is not an exhaustive list, but just a short summary of some of the areas included in the domain of prosody. Why am I interested in it? I guess it's because every one has a certain expertise in it by being a speaker of the language, e.g. being able to understand all of this intuitively [except for 4 and 5, perhaps]. The gap between what everyone can do and the technical analysis of it is huge. That gap also is interesting to me.