Australian languages have often been noted for their high rates of phonological uniformity cross-linguistically; investigations into the phonetics of these languages, however, have revealed rich phonetic variation below the phonological level. In the current study, the phonetic correlates of stress in thirteen Australian languages with fixed initial stress placement are investigated using corpus phonetics methods and based on archival field recordings of natural speech. Across these languages, a high f0 peak is a common correlate of initial stress, as has often been cited in the literature; increased vowel duration is similarly common. Effects of onset consonant or post-tonic consonant lengthening have been noted for many Australian languages and are sometimes found in this study, though the lengthening may only apply to one or two of stops, nasals, and glides.
Sarah Babinski (Mon,) studied this question.