Peenk?

There's an interesting video (tiktok or YouTube) from Alisa @multilingual_nest that starts with the question "Can you guess where I'm from based on what I'm about to tell you about my accent?" Here's Alisa's audio:

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As WoodyLing points out on YouTube, the discussion of Alisa's vowel in pink needs to start with the effects of final-consonant co-articulation on vowel color, and specifically the raising of the second formant involved in "velar pinch".

We can see (and hear) this clearly, in the audio examples from the online Merriam-Webster dictionary for "pink" and "pimp":

pink:

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pimp:

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In the MW audio for pink, F2 is 2616 Hz immediately at the start of voicing, and 2717 Hz in the middle of the vowel. In the MW audio for pimp, F2 is 2268 Hz and 2088 at the comparable points.

This suggests many questions about variation in acoustic-phonetic details across words and speakers and contexts.

• Is this difference phonetic (due to coarticulation with the final consonant), or phonological (representing a symbolic shift of vowel categories in the affected words), or both?
• Is it a near-merger as described in many other cases by sociolinguists?
• What is the distribution of the associated variation across space, time, and social structure?

I haven't seen any systematic studies of this phenomenon. Even if there's been some coverage, I suspect it remains a good opportunity for a term project or two.