Visualising the physiological and pathological dynamics of alpha-synuclein protein in human pluripotent stem cell derived cortical neurons

Dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson’s disease are part of a family of progressive neurodegenerative diseases known as alpha synucleinopathies, of which the protein alpha-synuclein (αSyn) is a major pathological driver. Whilst αSyn’s role in neurodegeneration is extensively studied, there is much less known about αSyn’s functional role in neurons and whether its normal physiological protein dynamics could lead to neurodegeneration. In this thesis, I investigated αSyn’s physiological role in innate immunity, developed live-imaging cellular models to observe αSyn protein dynamics, and explored how it could transition to a neurotoxic state. We first optimised the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) into cortical neurons using the dual SMAD inhibition protocol. Application of existing 2D-based differentiation protocols frequently produced highly proliferative non-neuronal cells that significantly affected neuronal culture integrity. We found that pro-collagen I alpha I (COL1A1) robustly labelled these disruptive subpopulations and found that low cell density encouraged COL1A1+ cell proliferation. We showed that COL1A1+ cells co-express neuronal progenitor markers indicating they are derived from a neural cell type, but they do not differentiate to desired neuronal cells. Using COL1A1 as a marker and image quantification, we employed whole well immunostaining to optimise the existing dual SMAD inhibition protocols. We discovered multiple optimisation steps that significantly reduced or eliminated the emergence of COL1A1+ cells. Our improved protocol has decreased batch-to-batch variability and increased the robustness of our modelling. Using our optimised protocol, we investigated αSyn’s normal role in cortical neurons. We and others have shown that αSyn’s physiological role may be in protecting neurons from neurotrophic viral infection. To investigate potential mechanisms of action of αSyn’s innate immune role, we characterised αSyn transcription, protein expression, and subcellular localisation under TLR3 agonism and Type-I interferon stimulation. We first showed that cortical neurons exhibited a robust transcriptional response to innate immune stimulation. We observed that acute Type-I interferon stimulation decreased intracellular αSyn protein levels and secretion, but did not change αSyn transcriptional levels in cortical neurons. We found that αSyn-null neurons exhibited delayed transcriptional responses to acute Type-I interferon stimulation, indicating that αSyn protein dynamics may support immediate-early anti-viral responses. We also found that αSyn exhibits a heterogeneous subcellular localisation indicative of a highly dynamic protein, and that Type-I interferon may promote αSyn nuclear localisation in a subset of cortical neurons. To further investigate αSyn’s dynamic role in real time, we constructed N-terminal and C-terminal αSyn-HaloTag live reporter constructs. We stably integrated N-terminal, C-terminal αSyn-HaloTag and HaloTag-only transgenes into the AAVS1 locus in multiple hPSC lines. Using live imaging microscopy and fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), we found that N-terminal and C-terminal constructs exhibited similar subcellular localisation profiles to endogenous αSyn in hPSCs but observed significantly increased fluorescence with our C-terminal αSyn-HaloTag construct. We also successfully characterised our C-terminal αSyn-HaloTag construct in mature cortical neurons and demonstrated that endogenously expressed αSyn-HaloTag fusion proteins could interact with exogenous αSyn-647 oligomers during live imaging. Whilst we could not elucidate a clear mechanism of action regarding αSyn’s role in innate immunity, we successfully developed a set of live imaging αSyn constructs and an optimised differentiation protocol to study αSyn protein dynamics in cortical neurons. This novel research provides a powerful platform to investigate αSyn physiological and pathological protein dynamics at high fidelity and has powerful future applications for synucleiopathy disease modelling research and drug screening

The negotiation of identity in English for academic purposes: investigating international students’ experiences in a Scottish university context

Increasing globalisation and student mobility have given rise to an agenda of internationalisation within Scottish universities. Concerns that the Covid-19 pandemic would precipitate a decline in international student numbers highlighted their importance for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), in terms of both reputation and financial health. However, the diverse needs of this cohort are still not fully appreciated, and more research is needed into their experiences. For many international students, the first point of contact with their chosen university is a pre-sessional course in English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The main goal of such instruction is to familiarise them with the language and skills required for university study in an Anglophone environment. Despite the growing provision of pre-sessional pathways, EAP students have been neglected in the literature, especially as regards their linguistic practices and identity development. In particular, there is a lack of understanding about how they manage the transition into mainstream tertiary education. The impetus for my study derives from teaching on pre-sessional EAP programmes and wishing to know more about students’ perceptions of their time in Scotland. The main aim was therefore to capture the experiences of a group of international postgraduates by following them over time. Drawing on the theories of investment (Norton, 2013), positioning (Davies & Harré, 1990) and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1977), I investigated their identity negotiation in different academic, linguistic and social situations. To the best of my knowledge, no tracking studies of this kind have previously been conducted in a Scottish context. The mixed-methods study took place in a Scottish university which attracts a high number of international students. An initial online survey was administered to a cohort of postgraduates undertaking its pre-sessional EAP programme to gather their views and demographic information. Following this, 11 focal participants were recruited for three indepth interviews. Further interviews were conducted with EAP tutors (n=7) and academic staff (n=7), and observations of EAP lessons also took place. Findings were analysed thematically, and data from the quantitative and qualitative phases were integrated to provide more detailed insights. Several key categories were generated in the course of thematic analysis. These included: adapting to unfamiliar expectations, perceptions of challenges, classroom participation, changing identities and social interactions. Postgraduate participants’ responses demonstrate that they experienced different interactive and reflexive positioning in the EAP and degree programmes. They also encountered more dynamic fluctuations in identity over time, as they tried to come to terms with new expectations. Findings reveal that EAP tutors made efforts to increase learners’ confidence, but harboured doubts about how they would be viewed in mainstream university classes. Although academic staff interviewees appeared willing to accommodate and support students from overseas, concerns were raised about the need to adapt their pedagogy. The study makes a contribution to knowledge in terms of reconceptualising how international students with a first language other than English are perceived. It adds to a shift away from positioning them as deficient and instead brings their own agency and cultural capital to the fore. There are implications for how we understand the experiences of individuals from diverse cultural and educational backgrounds. It is proposed that dialogue with both university staff and home students would lead to an improved awareness of the benefits of intercultural exchange. Further collaboration between EAP tutors and academic lecturers is also recommended. Such steps could help to ensure that international students are treated as legitimate members of the academic community, rather than as problems to be solved

An empirical investigation of alignment in dialogue: situational and cognitive factors

In dialogue, interlocutors build similar representations of what they are talking about. That is, they align on representations that are relevant to the conversation. We define aligned representations simply as representations held by at least two interlocutors, and which are similar to each other. Alignment at the level of representations leads to similarities in interlocutors’ behaviour: aligned interlocutors are likely to use the same words to refer to the same objects or events (i.e., they entrain on their lexical choices). We define entrainment as between-interlocutors repetitions of words during dialogue, and we understand it as a consequence of the alignment of lexical representations. Alignment is pervasive: speakers entrain with their interlocutors in written and spoken, online and in-person interactions, when talking with both human and conversational agents (such as bots and robots). At the same time, speakers can use entrainment for strategic purposes: to aid comprehension or to regulate social distances and enhance rapport. In this sense, alignment must be a mechanism that speakers can use flexibly. On top of that, interlocutors keep track of alignment and communicate about whether they believe they are aligned or not, through commentaries on alignment. We define a commentary on alignment as any behaviour that indicates an interlocutor’s belief about whether the interlocutors are aligned or not. Interlocutors can comment on alignment in several ways: by using backchannels (e.g., mh-mm, yeah, okay), by requesting repairs when needed (e.g., what was that? or who are we talking about?), or by repeating and sometimes elaborating on what their interlocutor said. This thesis is about the mechanisms that allow interlocutors to align and to communicate whether they are aligned in situated interactions, with other people and with conversational agents. The first part of the thesis focuses on entrainment in highly controlled interactions, where participants believed they were playing a reference game with a remote human interlocutor or with a virtual agent, under normal or high cognitive load. In Experiments 1-2 we presented interlocutors as high or low in social status and asked participants to rate the social status of the interlocutors either before or after playing the reference game. We found that participants entrained more with interlocutors presented as high in social status than low in social status, but only when they rated the social status before playing the game. In Experiments 3-4 we presented interlocutors as highly or poorly competent virtual agents, and we manipulated participants’ cognitive load using a dual-task paradigm. We found that participants entrained more with virtual agents when presented as poorly than highly competent, but only when participants could fully focus on the reference game. These results suggest that speakers can use alignment strategically when they can focus on the interaction, and when there are salient properties of the interaction that trigger communicative and social intentions, but that they can also rely on simpler – and more automatic - mechanisms when such intentions are less salient and when they are distracted. The second part of the thesis (Chapters 5-6) focuses on alignment and use of commentaries in more naturalistic interactions, and whether they are affected by the topic of the conversation and the interlocutors involved. In Experiment 5, participants ranked some items from the most to the least useful for people stranded in the desert, and, after discussing the items with a partner, they ranked the items once again. The order was presented as factual in one group (i.e., unknown to participants, but defined by the British Army) or contestable in the other group (i.e., unknown to the participants, who were made aware that there was no right or wrong order). In Experiment 6, participants performed the same task but discussed with a social robot, whose appearance was either human- or machine-like. Alignment was measured as the increase in similarity between rankings after the discussion, compared to the similarity in rankings before the discussion. In both experiments, participants aligned with their interlocutor, but there was no effect of how the ranking was framed or of how the robot appeared. However, participants used more commentaries when discussing the items in the ranking presented as contestable compared to the ranking presented as factual. Additionally, participants’ use of commentaries was similar in human-human and human-robot interactions. Overall, these results confirm that alignment – and its commentaries – are pervasive in interactions with human and conversational agents, but that they can be adapted flexibly to context. Such ubiquity and flexibility may be allowed by the existence of multiple mechanisms and which mechanism is used may be triggered by specific situational properties of the interaction. These properties include the communicative needs of the interlocutors, their nature, the social dynamics embedded in the interaction, whether or not the speakers can dedicate full attention to them, and the topic of conversation

Self-supervised machine learning algorithms for hyperspectral image inpainting

Hyperspectral images (HSIs) can be captured by the satellite sensors at a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum, each presenting the samples at different timeslots, by for example, using push-broom strategies, which are the state-of-the-art practical technologies. Different from RGB images, the nature of the HSI acquisition system makes HSI a 3D data cube that covers hundreds or thousands of narrow spectral bands, conveying a wealth of spatial and spectral information. However, due to instrumental errors and atmospheric changes, the HSI images obtained in practice are often contaminated by noise and dark pixels, which may severely compromise the subsequent processing. It is thus, of vital importance, to improve the quality of the image in the first place. This PhD thesis focuses on the design and analysis of HSI inpainting algorithms to accurately recover images from incomplete observations. Since the existing solutions either failed or behaved badly in the most challenging scenarios where all the spectral bands are missing, which may happen in practice due to instrumental or downlink failures. This study aims to solve this issue through exploiting the recent deep learning techniques. We hope this thesis is able to encourage fruitful discussions and stimulate future research on the exploration of more powerful deep models for solving HSI inpainting problems. Firstly, we introduce here a novel HSI missing pixel prediction algorithm, called Low Rank and Sparsity Constraint Plug-and-Play (LRS-PnP). It is shown that LRS-PnP can effectively cope with the aforementioned difficulties found by traditional methods. The proposed LRS-PnP algorithm is further extended to a self-supervised model by combining the LRS-PnP with the Deep Image Prior (DIP), called LRS-PnP-DIP. We show that the proposed LRS-PnP-DIP algorithm enjoys the specific learning capability of deep networks, called inductive bias, but without needing any external training data, \textit{i,e.} self-supervised learning. In a series of experiments with real data, we show that the LRS-PnP-DIP either achieves state-of-the-art inpainting performance compared to other learning-based methods or outperforms them. However, it is found that the instability inherited from the conventional DIP model makes the LRS-PnP-DIP algorithm sometimes diverge. This observation motivate us to conduct a theoretical analysis of the convergence of the proposed method. Secondly, we explore LRS-PnP and LRS-PnP-DIP in more depth by showing that their potential instability can be solved by slightly modifying both deep hyperspectral prior and plug-and-play denoiser. Under some mild assumptions, we give a fixed-point convergence proof for the LRS-PnP-DIP algorithm and introduce a variant to the LRS-PnP-DIP. We show through extensive experiments that the proposed solution can produce visually and qualitatively superior inpainting results, which achieves competitive performance compared to the original algorithm. Thirdly, we present a powerful HSI inpainting algorithm that dynamically combines self-supervised learning with the recent popular Diffusion model. The proposed Hyerspectral Diffusion based on the Equivariant Imaging (HyDiff-EI) algorithm exploits the strong learning capability of the neural network prior and leverages the high-level hierarchical information of the diffusion models. We empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method on the HSI datasets, showing a big performance gap over existing methods based on deep priors/existing diffusion models, and established new state-of-the-art on the self-supervised HSI inpainting task

“For us, the deity’s command is supreme”: deity traditions and the cosmopolitical mediations of sovereignty in Kullu, Western Himalayas

This thesis explores the complex cosmopolitical expressions of sovereignty in the context of the deity traditions in the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh, India. In the predominantly rural Himalayan region of Kullu, villages are governed by deities who exercise sovereignty over their territories by regulating everything from the weather to political activity. The deities ‘rule’ with the help of their temple attendants such as kardar (manager), gur (medium), mandhari (store-keeper), bajantari (musicians) and pujari (priest), among others. The agency of these deities emerges in their social and political milieu as they speak through their mediums, and move in the form of chariots (rath), and other sacred objects (nishan). There are over four hundred territorial deities that constitute the larger deity community across the district. They are ritually tied to the figure of the ‘king’ of the erstwhile kingdom of Kullu, who is also an active participant in state and national politics within the contemporary Indian context. Furthermore, the Indian State legally recognises the deities’ status as land-owning individuals whose revenue records are maintained by the district administration. Moreover, the district-wide unions of temple attendants such as the Kardar Sangh (kardars’ union), Gur Sangh (gurs’ union) and Bajantari Sangh (bajantaris’ union), act as state-recognised representatives of the deities’ collective interests alongside their own. Together, the deities and their followers, temple attendants, district administration, the ‘king’, and the various unions of temple attendants compose the cosmopolitical landscape of the Kullu district where the deities’ sovereignty is mediated through multiple, interlinked actors. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Kullu as my main method of enquiry, I explore how the deities’ collective sovereignty is projected and maintained through a network of agents. I begin with the ritual journeys and festivals where the deities’ chariots, moving along with their followers in walking processions, map their shared sovereignty over the landscape. Along with the chariots’ anthropomorphic movements driven by divine music, the deities’ territorial sovereignty is also tied to the evolving oral traditions that continually frame their relationship with the landscape amidst the transformative forces of capitalism and Hindu majoritarianism. Deities’ land-ownership, moreover, is also recognised by the state which exercises its authority in safeguarding the deities’ land. Operating at the threshold of the state and the deity, the kardar (manager) facilitates the legibility of the deity’s sovereignty within the bureaucratic framework of the state. Moreover, the district-wide union of kardars, known as the Kardar Sangh, draws the deities’ sovereignty into the document-centric machinery of the state, gaining legitimacy through identity cards, notices, proposals and profusely-signatured memoranda. The role played by unions such as the Kardar Sangh in regulating the extent of the state’s authority over the deities’ affairs, emerges in cases such as Covid-19 restrictions, large-scale tourism projects, and the documentation and representation of the deities’ identities. The deities’ identities, particularly their names, emerge as strategic spaces for projecting their sovereignty across multiple audiences. The writing down of deities’ names, especially in state-commissioned census surveys, facilitates the stabilisation of the Sanskritised identities ascribed to deities which support their recognisability across greater audiences in a tourism-dominated region. Even as the Sanskritised identities are often destabilised by the deities’ existing networks of kinship and ritual, it is essential to understand that the process of Sanskritisation itself is facilitated by the larger ideological and structural proliferation of Hindu nationalism. This proliferation extends into the questions of animal sacrifice, use of Sanskrit scriptures in temples, and the relevance of ritual possession itself, all of which are tied to the articulations of the deities’ sovereignty. Within this nexus, the figure of the gur (medium) becomes crucial, inside as well as outside the ritual space, in reinforcing the deity’s sovereign authority when it is undermined. Moreover, in declaring the deity’s disapproval in cases such as the state-commissioned Bijli Mahadev Ropeway Project in Kullu, the gur’s position becomes vital in terms of expanding the scope of resistance against the state’s large-scale projects around deities’ lands, reinforcing the deity’s sovereignty as paramount. Sovereignty of the deities in Kullu, and the surrounding Himalayan regions, emerges as greater than the sum of its human parts, especially during natural calamities and disruptive events that shift the scales of power in the hands of the divine rulers of the Himalayan landscape. Nonetheless, the deities’ sovereignty also exists as a relational phenomenon, drawing in multiple interconnected actors such as the temple attendants, unions, the ‘king’, and the state, that exist in dynamic relationships of collaboration, negotiation and conflict. Together, these actors not only reproduce the complex articulations of the deities’ sovereignty but also reinforce the cosmopolitical constitution of the Kullu district, where their own sovereign agency is sustained

First Scottish Forum on Future Electricity Markets - Report

This report summarises the presentations and discussions at the first Scottish forum on future electricity markets in December 2024. The main topic was reform of the UK electricity market options including zonal pricing or a reformed national market

From God without signs to signs without God: on theological and profane readings of the non-mimetic text in the late-R̥gvedic hymns and the work of Mallarmé and Derrida

This thesis examines selected late hymns of the R̥gveda (India, ca. 1000 BCE) and the modern text as it emerges from the work of Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) and Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). One of the hallmarks of this text is that its structure disrupts the classical interpretation of mimesis, according to which signs only serve to represent a signified in real life. The principal argument is that, in terms of semiotic structure, the late-R̥gvedic hymns are a very similar kind of text, which the thesis undertakes to examine with regard to its theological and profane readings. In the West, the reinterpretation of mimesis inevitably disrupts the established model of theology, according to which God is an agential being and life’s ultimate signified, or logos. Mallarmé’s modern text is therefore by definition profane, so is Derrida’s critique of the Western philosophical tradition, which is likewise logocentric. In the late-R̥gvedic period, by contrast, the source of things was no stable being or sign-producer but instead believed to lie somewhere between the real and the unreal. Semiotic properties which the West considers inherently profane were hence nonetheless open to theological interpretation. The ancient Indian poets composed hymns in honour of a God without signs, while Mallarmé and Derrida, by very similar means but to different effect, worked towards signs without God. By reinterpreting these core values, the thesis shines a critical light on some key ideas of Derridean deconstruction and more generally reflects on the cultural and historical limits of our abilities to read. A minor part of the argument concerns gender studies. Both traditions agree that the poet is a man capable of elevating the mundane stuff of speech, which is considered female. By tracking this male-centric poetics of transcendence from the age of Mallarmé to Vedic ritual, the thesis shows that the sexist rhetoric of Romanticism and Symbolism, whose roots some have identified in the Renaissance, is in fact much older and more generally Indo-European. This part of the argument further examines certain details of Derrida’s account of structure, which suggest that in our logocentric culture man is, despite his claims to transcendence, also prey to some deeply rooted insecurities. The thesis’s small contribution to gender studies consists in exposing this weakness of the logocentric male to an unfamiliar cultural context, in which men also dreamed of transcendence, yet with a quite different mind

Sexual offending in adults with intellectual disabilities: A systematic review evaluating risk assessment measures for sexual offending in adults with intellectual disabilities; &, An interpretative phenomenological analysis on the experiences of families of adults with an intellectual disability charged with sexual offence

This thesis portfolio is submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. The portfolio comprises two studies that explore aspects of sexual offending in adults with intellectual disabilities (ID). The first study is a systematic review evaluating the predictive validity of risk assessment measures for sexual offending in adults with ID. A systematic search across five electronic databases identified nine eligible studies, which were critically appraised and synthesised following PRISMA guidelines. Findings revealed considerable variability in predictive performance across tools. Structured Professional Judgement (SPJ) tools, particularly those specifically developed for ID populations, demonstrated superior predictive validity for sexual recidivism compared to general actuarial measures. However, methodological limitations across studies, including inconsistent definitions of recidivism and ID, should be noted. The implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed, with particular emphasis on the need for validated, ID-specific risk assessment measures. The second study is an empirical investigation using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore the lived experiences of family members of adults with ID who have been charged with a sexual offence. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five participants (three mothers and two brothers) to explore the experiences and impacts of the offence. The analysis identified four Group Experiential Themes: ‘Sense-making’, ‘Weight of Carer's Identity’, ‘Living in Fear’, and ‘Navigating the System’. Participants described complex processes of reconciling prior perceptions of their relative, heightened caregiving burdens, experiences of stigma and hypervigilance, and significant challenges accessing adequate systemic support. The findings contribute to an under-researched population and underscore the need for trauma-informed, family-inclusive services. Together, the two studies provide a novel contribution to understanding both risk prediction in ID sexual offending populations and the broader systemic effects on families. Recommendations for clinical practice and future research are outlined

A new approach to post-Newtonian gravity

In the thesis we consider the classic problem of a compact matter source (a perfect fluid) that evolves under the assumption of slow motion and weak gravitational field. The non-relativistic evolution of the system leads to a separation of scales. This allows us to solve for the metric near the source (the near zone) using a post-Newtonian expansion while outside (the exterior zone) the source we apply a multipolar post-Minkowskian expansion. Due to the separation of scales the exterior zone and the near zone will overlap which allows us to glue the two expansions together using matched asymptotic expansion methods. Standard approaches like that of Blanchet-Damour or the DIRE approach rely entirely on harmonic gauge. In this thesis we set up the framework to allow for any gauge with a Newtonian regime which we will refer to as post-Newtonian gauges. With this we are able to make broad statements about the structure of the expansion and the equations of motion in any post-Newtonian gauge and to arbitrary orders in both the near zone and the exterior zone expansions. We check that our framework correctly reproduces the near zone metric in harmonic gauge to 2.5 post-Newtonian order. Finally, we apply our framework to the transverse gauge which can be thought of as the general relativity equivalent of the Coulomb gauge in electromagnetism. We explicitly compute the near zone metric in transverse gauge to 2.5 post-Newtonian order as well as the far zone metric up to 1 post-Newtonian order beyond the quadrupole formula

Intention, aspect, and argument structure: the morphosyntax and morphosemantics of the Akkadian verb

This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of the ROOT-and-template system of the Akkadian (East-Semitic, c. 2600 BCE – 75 CE) verb. It does so in two novel ways for Akkadian, by a) developing grammatical tests for the disambiguation of thirteen derivationally-consequential classes of lexical ROOTS, and b) recontextualising the templatic alternations as different ways of marking either a causal or noncausal alternant in the causative-alternation. Akkadian has three template patterns, a base G stem, an intensive/factitive D stem, and a causative Š stem. The G stem, assumed here to be the projection of the ROOT, is used to diagnose the ROOT classes. Through the development of three grammatical tests involving the Stative, perfective and imperfective conjugations, as well as the verbal adjectival derivation, distinct argument structural, i.e., syntactic, and aspectual, i.e., semantic features can be determined for different ROOTS, resulting in thirteen distinct ROOT classes. The D and the Š stem are motivated to be two aspectually distinct causative morphemes: the D stem serves as the direct, atelic causative and introduces an Agent, while the Š stem functions as the indirect, telic causative and introduces a Causer. The choice of which causative could be used for the causative-alternation of a given ROOT is either dependent on the aspectual and argument-structural features of a ROOT (and its class), or on pragmatic choice, i.e., a speakers intention of communication. This choice for causation-telicity is made at a designated layer of projection, referred to as FocusP (Simpson & Wu 2002), which is only present in D and Š derivations, and is immediately reflected in syntactic restrictions imposed on VoiceP (Kratzer 1996). ROOT (class) and causative must thereby not contradict one another in aspectual features (i.e., telic ROOT derives telic causative), but must not overlap in syntactic features (i.e., Agent-ROOT may not derive Agent-causative). The different feature-combinations in FocusP and VoiceP determine the different template patterns and their syntactic and semantic properties. By contrast, the two anticausatives, t- and n-, used to denote reflexives, passives, but also noncausal verbs, are restricted by solely syntactic properties, again derived from the interaction of FocusP and VoiceP. The different features associated with the D and Š stems on FocusP and by consequence VoiceP, determine why t-morphemes inserted into G and Š show greater semantic flexibility, while t-morphemes inserted into D may only function as passives. Through the formulation of grammatical tests, the disambiguation of ROOT-classes, and the precise formulation of the causative and anticausative morphemes syntactic and semantic properties, this thesis presents a novel, concise, and comprehensive analysis of the Akkadian verb