Unreleased stops

Compare the final [t] of cat in the following two sentences: In "The cat is hungry", the tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge for the [t] and then moves away so that the vocal tract can form the following vowel of is. In "Feed the cat", on the other hand, the tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge for the final [t] but, for most speakers, does not leave again. This second [t] has an onset phase, and a medial (or closure) phase, but no offset (or release) phase.

This tendency of phrase-final stops to be unreleased is one of the characteristic features of most dialects of English. Id does not necessarily hold in other languages. In an IPA transcription, we can record an unreleased stop using the "corner" diacritic,