This study attempts to track the incidence of inter-word yod coalescence
and possibility of its correlation with social factors in Nigerian English. Three
hundred and sixty educated Nigerian speakers of English, evenly distributed into
social variables of gender, age and social class, provided data for the study. They
were guided to voice five utterances and a short passage into digital recording
devices. Tokens of yod coalescence produced at different word boundaries were
extracted and analysed statistically, using percentages and the univariate Analysis
of Variance (ANOVA). The findings reveal a very low usage (3.6%) of inter-word
yod coalescence. The process was, however, more prevalent among young
speakers and members of high social class who seem to be importing it into the
accent. This finding points in the direction of some ongoing innovation in the
NigE accent, which possibly suggests the onset of socially conditioned phoneticphonological variation.