Reopen rationale: The linked-to question deals with prevocalic word-final consonants in general, and the examples given in both the question and answers there naturally deal exclusively with obstruents. However, the Original Poster's question here uses an example with a prevocalic lateral approximant. The behaviour of word-final prevocalic approximants, and prevocalic laterals in prticular, is to say the least idiosyncratic in English, especially British vareties such as Southern Standard British English (or "RP"). For this reason the issue here deserves and requires its own treatment.
Why is it that when a word ends with a consonant sound and is followed by a word starting with a vowel sound, we re-pronounce that final consonant at the start of the next word—so the consonant appears both at the end of the first word and the beginning of the second? Why is this done?
Take a classic line from Yes, Prime Minister (at 0:05):
“They can't even control Afghanistan.”
In the original show, the final /l/ of control is clearly linked to the initial /æ/ of Afghanistan, so it sounds like control-lAfghanistan. Does this /l/ sound have to be present both at the end of control and when linking to the next vowel? Wouldn’t that sound redundant?
