Thank you - categories vs. categorise is a great spot!!! Where are the spelling mistakes? I don't see the missing 'the' in the first sentence? Mechanism here is in the abstract, if that's what you're referring to? That said, I've also not slept a lot in the last week...
FWIW, this is the submission to my committee, so I'm now spending the next few weeks meticulously going through to tighten up the grammar, catch typos etc., before it gets officially submitted in June.
I had to pause on that spot too because it felt stilted when reading over it, though after reading it again I got what you were talking about and it read fine.
Not at all - there's some additional text that provides set-up for the idea of mechanism. Re-reading it now cold, I read it exactly as you (and others) did as well. And I (embarrassingly) am relatively confident I wouldn't have caught the categories/categorise error, huge thank you!
FWIW, this is the submission to my committee, so I'm now spending the next few weeks meticulously going through to tighten up the grammar, catch typos etc., before it gets officially submitted in June.