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This talk is given on the occasion of having a paper rejected from the linguistics journal Glossa. While rejection is nothing unusual – indeed, it is a common experience of academic publishing – some of the comments of one of the reviewers were particularly provocative, stating that my analysis of Gorwaa amounted to exoticisation of the language. Because the paper was rejected, I have had no formal channel by which to respond to these comments, which I take seriously, and consider objectionable. Because all of these comments have to do with how I represent the Gorwaa language through glosses, responding to them also presents a good opportunity to reflect on the choices I have made in describing the language, as well as to share some of my understanding of the Gorwaa language., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2023. Why do I gloss Gorwaa like that? Responses to an anonymous review of a rejected paper. Talk given at the Linguistics Colloquium. University of Bayreuth, Germany. 16.05.2023.

An overview of the Gorwaa language, based on fieldwork and recordings, for the University of Bayreuth course "Linguistic Field Research Methods"., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2023. Introducing Gorwaa. Lecture given as part of the course "Linguistic Field Research Methods". University of Bayreuth, Germany. 03.05.2023.

This talk takes a look back at the third year of the Rift Valley Webinar Series, with the intent of comparing it with previous years, exploring common themes in Rift research and possibilities for the future., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2022. Retrospective of The Rift Valley Network Webinar Series – Year 3. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 23/03/2022.

The linker in Gorwaa is a nominal morpheme with six different (sub)gender sensitive allomorphs. The bolded forms in slufit�� w��k "one lip", desir'e��' "my girl", hhawat�� baab�� "father's man"; kurk�� "this year", ayeem�� uren "big lands", and /ayl�� tleer "a long wedding song" are all linkers. Nouns do not show linker morphology in the following environments: unmodified subjects, unmodified objects in 'second position' (i.e. before the selector), and incorporated nouns. Nouns do show linker morphology everywhere else.Earlier accounts of linkers in Southern Cushitic languages characterise them as construct state morphology - a form taken by nouns in many Afroasiatic languages when possessed. Following a discussion of why the idea of possession is not adequate to characterise all occurrences of linker morphology, an alternative is advanced: that linkers are obligatorily present on all nouns with reference, but go unpronounced when at the right edge of the phonological phrase. Finally, new analysis made in Kerr (2020) is considered, as well as prospects for better understanding this pervasive phenomenon in Gorwaa., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2021. From construct state, to reference, and beyond: the linker morpheme in Gorwaa. Talk given as part of the This Time for Africa Lecture Series, Leiden University, Netherlands. 04.12.2021.

Presentation as part of the plenary panel "Collaborative Linguistic Fieldwork During the Current Crises and Beyond" at SOLCON IV., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2021. Remote but not distant: Lessons from fieldwork with Gorwaa, Hadza, and Ihanzu speaker communities. Talk given as part of the panel "Collaborative Linguistic Fieldwork During the Current Crises and Beyond" at the fourth School of Languages Conference (SOLCON IV), University of Ghana, Ghana (Online). 05.11.2021.

A seminal chapter by Kießling et al. (2008) identified a concentration of preverbal clitic clusters in the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area. Crucially they noted that preverbal clitic placement is neither a prominent feature of Nilotic nor the Bantu languages of the area and as such, they considered preverbal clitic clusters to represent an areal feature reflecting the sustained history of language contact in the area. The present paper builds on the foundation laid out by Kießling et al. (2008) and expands to include a broader range of languages, allowing for more detailed discussion and the inclusion of additional data., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Gibson, Hannah, Andrew Harvey, and Richard Griscom. 2021. Preverbal clitic complexes in the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 08/09/2021.

Language documentation has had a major impact on the trajectory of linguistics since the turn of the century, both in terms of what is considered linguistic data, as well as how that data is collected and used. Taking my work - 10 years of documentation in the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area - as a case study, this talk reflects on how my practice has been shaped by language documentation discourse, as well as how the local context has shaped how I do language documentation. Three central topics to be explored include the effect of a documentary approach on grammatical description, the emergence of literary genres from documentary materials, as well as the potential language documentation has for supporting the narrative sovereignty of marginalised speaker communities. Finally, the talk will provide some assessment on the future(s) of language documentation on the continent, and what language documentation in Africa must become to ultimately succeed. At the same time, the talk explores what collaboration can look like, actively pushing back against the idea of this work being the top-down pursuit of a "lone wolf" linguist. Examples will be provided as rich audiovisual material throughout, drawing on the verbal arts of the Gorwaa, Ihanzu, and Hadzabe people., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2021. Recalibrating Documentation: Reflections on 10 years of language documentation in the Tanzanian Rift. Lecture given at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. 22.06.2021.

When involving members of a speech community in the documentation of their own language, it is common to work with speakers who have some experience with formal education or technology. But what about communities whose speakers have very little access to both? This talk describes documentary projects spanning approximately ten years and involving four different speaker communities of the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area, all of which could be described as low-resource, marginalised, or existing outside of the larger power-structure. We aim here to assert that not only are Insider Researcher led projects in these contexts possible, but that they also result in objectively better documentations. This talk presents a mixed methods analysis showing how Insider Researcher led projects can produce documentations more comprehensive than those produced solely by outsider researchers, and thus of greater value to both linguists and fields beyond. We also show that, especially in the context of marginalised speaker communities, Insider Researcher led projects can produce documentations more emically meaningful than those produced solely by outsider researchers, and thus of greater value to the speaker community itself. Methods will include a quantitative review of our projects, showing how Local Researchers work in different patterns to outsider linguists (i.e. the authors), as well as a qualitative examination of the nature of some of these different patterns., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew, and Richard Griscom. 2021. Can the subaltern document? A mixed methods analysis of community-led language documentation. Talk given at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics Sociolinguistics Seminar Series. 14/05/2021.

This talk takes a look back at the second year of the Rift Valley Webinar Series, with the intent of comparing it with the first year, exploring common themes in Rift research and possibilities for the future., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew and Richard Griscom. 2021. Retrospective of the RVN Webinar Series, Year 2. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 24/03/2021.

The South Cushitic languages Gorwaa (ISO639-3: gow) and Iraqw (ISO639-3: irk) - both spoken in Tanzania by approximately 130,000 and 500,000 people, respectively – are among the small number of Cushitic languages spoken in the country, setting themselves apart by their phonology, grammar, as well as the wider cultures of their speaker communities. Linguists working from both outsider (Harvey 2019) and insider (Alphonce 2020) perspectives have argued that Gorwaa and Iraqw naming traditions are important conduits of local history, and are under considerable pressure from Christian, Muslim, and Swahili naming conventions. While both of the above works attempt an internal typology of Gorwaa and Iraqw names and naming, no attempt has been made to place them within the larger context of Tanzanian names and naming systems. This talk begins with a detailed discussion of names and naming in Gorwaa and Iraqw, distinguishing several independent mechanisms within the larger whole, including inherited, circumstantial, and talismanic names. Then, drawing on a wealth of newly-available analyses of names and naming in other Tanzanian languages, the Gorwaa and Iraqw systems are compared and contrasted with those present in Bantu-, Nilotic-, and Hadza-speaking communities., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew, and Chrispina Alphonce. 2021. Names and Naming in Gorwaa and Iraqw: a typological Tanzanian perspective. Talk given at the American Name Society Annual Meeting 2021, Online. 24/01/2021.

An overview of riddles and riddling in Ihanzu., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2020. Riddles in Ihanzu. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Workshop "Riddles of the Rift Valley: Variation and convergence in a verbal genre". 20/11/2020.

This talk provides an initial account of our ongoing language documentation project, specifically in terms of where Hadza is spoken, who Hadza is spoken by, how Hadza is used. Due to the type of questions we are seeking to answer, which focuses on who speaks Hadza, rather than who has traditionally been characterised as Hadza, the picture of the Hadza people which emerges from our research methodology is strikingly different from many of those previously given. Sketches situating the Hadza language in its social context, and contrasts with past accounts will be drawn throughout. One goal of this talk is linguistic: discussing new findings on a language and speaker community for which there has been little documentation. Another goal is to address past assertions which have systemically erased large portions of the Hadza people., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew, and Richard Griscom. 2020. Who are the Hadza? A linguistic perspective. Talk given at CALL 50, Leiden University. 31/08/2020.

The Gorwaa Symposium is a small series of talks designed to help students from the Masters course 'Core Examples of Linguistic Structure' expand their assignments on Gorwaa grammar into publishable works. These remarks provide some further context for the Gorwaa language, including where it is spoken, an example of what it sounds like, as well as several current unanswered questions., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2020. The Gorwaa symposium: some opening remarks. Talk given at the Gorwaa Symposium, Leiden University, the Netherlands. 27/08/2020.

The Haydom language documentation training workshop was a 5-day gathering whose main goal was to train native speakers of the Tanzanian languages Ihanzu and Hadza to independently conduct ethical audiovisual language documentation in their own communities. This report provides a narrative account of the workshop, as well as reflections and recommendations for individuals interested in developing an event like this in low-resource contexts. The report also features photos taken during the workshop, as well as testimonials from attendees., Note: This report has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew, and Richard Griscom. 2020. Haydom Language Documentation Training Workshop - January 2020: A Report. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3971733

Gorwaa verbs are traditionally described as falling into one of six inflectional paradigms. This talk provides a phonological analysis and proposes a process of sonorisation/desonorisation to reduce the number of inflectional paradigms., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2020. Verbal paradigms in Gorwaa: phonological analysis in service of a unified account. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 06/05/2020.

This talk takes a look back at the first year of the Rift Valley Webinar Series, with the intent of exploring common themes in Rift research and possibilities for the future., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew and Richard Griscom. 2020. Retrospective of the RVN Webinar Series, Year One. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 25/03/2020.

Ihanzu possesses two phonemic tone contrasts: low (zero) and high. This talk, incorporating audio recordings from recent fieldwork, explores and demonstrates the layers of rules which dictate the instantiation of tone in this language., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew and Daisuke Shinagawa. 2020. Tone in Ihanzu. Talk Given at Rift Valley Webinar Series 11/03/2020.

The concept of language documentation (especially as articulated in Himmelmann 1998), is experiencing radical changes in both theory and practice across the African continent (c.f. Seyfeddinipur (ed.) 2016). With a focus on the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area (largely as conceived by Kießling, Mous, and Nurse 2008), this talk examines how language documentation in Africa 1) is strongest when it takes into account the performativeness at the core of communicative practices; 2) has met with general failure when serving agendas of text-based maintenance and revitalization; and 3) shows great promise when it seeks to work within and strengthen traditions of orality (c.f. Ameka 2015)., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2019. Language documentation: a view from the Tanzanian Rift Valley. Talk given at the African Studies Association of Africa conference, Nairobi, Kenya. 25/10/2019.

A nomadic hunter-gatherer people who speak a click language, the Hadza people are a highly salient group within the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area, and have been a focus of academic inquiry in Tanzania for over 100 years. With a focus on the (often interrelated) fields of linguistics and anthropology, this talk traces the academic discourse on the Hadza people, and, specifically, how the former has shaped our conceptions (or misconceptions) of the latter. A dominant narrative to emerge is the conception of the Hadza people as members of an insular culture who have undergone minimal change. We would like to show how this concept has made its way into the popular imagination of outsiders, and the effects that this has had on the Hadza people today. We will then show recent challenges brought by linguists to this dominant narrative., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew, and Richard Griscom. 2019. Hadza: A century of research. Talk given at the African Studies Association of Africa conference, Nairobi, Kenya. 24/10/2019.

Gorwaa (South Cushitic, Afro-Asiatic) is an endangered language, spoken by approximately 133,000 individuals in the Babati district of central Tanzania. Analysis of the use of traditional Gorwaa names shows a continual decline and a reorientation toward Christian, Muslim, and Swahili naming conventions. As such, the naming tradition under examination may itself be viewed as also endangered. This is not trivial, as personal names and how they are bestowed provides a window into the cultural life of a people, as well as into historical language dynamics. Through interviews with Gorwaa people, listening to relevant life stories in the Gorwaa language and cultural material archive, and using a list of 750 Gorwaa personal names, collected during fieldwork in Babati district between 2012 and 2016, an ethnographic sketch of Gorwaa naming conventions is provided. Many of the semantically transparent names in the list refer to actions or events – a common theme throughout naming conventions on the African continent. More specifically, many personal names play a role in warding off evil, ensuring family continuity, as well as honouring figures of power. Extensive borrowings from Datooga will be considered as a testament to long-term, sustained contact in the area. Recent borrowings from Swahili and English provide insight into the nature of these relatively new contacts., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2019. Names and naming in Gorwaa. Talk given at the African Studies Association of Africa conference, Nairobi, Kenya. 24/10/2019.

This talk is an outline of two closely-related projects to be based at Leiden University over the coming 24 months. Gorwaa (South-Cushitic, Afro-Asiatic), Hadza (isolate), and Ihanzu (Bantu (F-group), Niger-Congo) are three of the least documented languages of the Tanzanian Rift Valley linguistic area. Decreasing numbers (15,000 for Gorwaa in 2017, 650 for Hadza in 2013, and 32,000 for Ihanzu in 1987), environmental change, and the loss of linguistic domains to Swahili all contribute to the endangerment status of these three languages. Building on knowledge gained during previous documentation projects (Gorwaa for Andrew Harvey, and Asimjeeg Datooga for Richard Griscom), the current projects aim to provide equivalent documentation of materials deemed historically and culturally important for the Ihanzu and Hadza, including musical traditions, oral histories, and traditional ecological knowledge. Harvey will employ these materials, supplemented in all three languages with structured elicitation, to form the basis of grammatical analysis comparing specific features present in these languages with the characteristic areal features for the Tanzanian Rift Valley. Griscom, focusing exclusively on Hadza, will conduct detailed sociolinguistic interviews, as well as explore possible regional differences in varieties of Hadza. Both projects will actively involve the language communities by training local speakers in audiovisual language documentation methods, as well as providing funding for them to make extensive recordings of their own languages. This project is based on the assumption that language contact also implies human contact (intermarriage, cultural contact, etc.), and aims to challenge traditional assumptions of the African past as one in which ethnic groups were static, isolated, and primitive, and to suggest alternative African pasts in which African societies are dynamic, innovative, and often more complex than an ethicity-based view of ‘tribe’ allows. Furthermore, it aims to actively involve Africans in this reframing process and to provide a platform for the indigenous peoples of the Rift Valley Area to actively participate in and guide the documentation of their languages., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Griscom, Richard, and Andrew Harvey. 2019. Gorwaa, Hadza, and Ihanzu: Language contact, variation, and grammatical inquiries in the Tanzanian Rift. Talk given at East Africa Day Leiden 27/09/2019.

Introductory remarks at the East Africa Day workshop held at Leiden University on Friday, September 27th, 2019., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew, and Richard Griscom. 2019. East Africa Day Leiden: Introduction. Talk given at East Africa Day Leiden 27/09/2019.

The Tanzanian Rift Valley Area, as conceived by Kießling, Mous, and Nurse (2008), is unique on the continent in that it is the only place in which all four of the major African language phyla (Afro-asiatic, Khoisan, Niger-Congo, and Nilo-Saharan) have been in contact for a long time. In this same work, the authors identify 19 features (phonological, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic) which cut across individual languages and language phyla, and are therefore candidates for examples of areal convergence. Of these features, one of the most salient (and most extensively discussed) is that of the preverbal clitic complex: a series of functional particles which occur before the verb, and which carry out functions commonly conceived as verbal in nature. This talk examines the functional particles which occur before the verb in Ihanzu. Based on newly-conducted fieldwork, this talk seeks to add to our empirical knowledge of Ihanzu - an underdocumented language existing on the margins of the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area - as well as revisit the story of contact as told through these preverbal particles., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2019. Preverbal particles in Ihanzu. Talk given at Workshop on Bantu in contact with non-Bantu, ILCAA, TUFS. 27/07/2019., {"references":["Harvey, Andrew. 2017. Gorwaa: an archive of language and cultural material from the Gorwaa people of Babati (Manyara region, Tanzania). London, SOAS Endangered Languages Archive. URL: [https://elar.soas.ac.uk/Collection/MPI1014224]. Accessed on: 2019/06/24","Harvey, Andrew. (forthcoming). Ihanzu: an archive of language and cultural material from the Ihanzu people of Mkalama (Singida region, Tanzania). London, SOAS Endangered Languages Archive.","Kießling, Roland. 2002. Die Rekonstruktion der südkuschitischen Sprachen (West-Rift): von den systemlinguistischen Manifestationen zum gesellschaftlichen Rahmen des Sprachwandels. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.","Kießling, Roland, Maarten Mous, and Derek Nurse. 2008. \"The Tanzanian Rift Valley Area\". In: A Linguistic Geography of Africa. Cambridge University Press.","Marten, Lutz. 2013. Linguistic variation, language contact, and the new comparative Bantu. YouTube. Published on 2013/04/12. URL: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDrZRZTCcyU]. Accessed on: 2019/06/24.","Nurse, Derek. 2000. Diachronic morphosyntactic change in Western Tanzania. In: Mehr als Worte. Afrikanischetische Beiträge zum 65. Geburstag von Franz Rottland, ed. by Rainier Voßen, Angelika Mietzner, and Antje Meißner, 517-534. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.","Olson, H.S. 1964. The phonology and morphology of Rimi. Hartford: Hartford Studies in Linguistics.","Owens, Jonathan. 1985. A Grammar of Harar Oromo. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag."]}

Harvey 2017 is the result of a large, multimedia documentation of Gorwaa language and cultural material. This talk 1) provides an overview of the contents of this collection, 2) gives examples of how the collection can be searched and interpreted, and 3) suggests some 'threads' running through the collection that might be fruitful for future exploration., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew. 2019.The Gorwaa language and cultural material archive: an overview. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 29/05/2019., {"references":["Bowern, Claire. 2008. Linguistic fieldwork: a practical guide. Palgrave Macmillan, London.","Fitzgerald, Colleen M. & Mary S. Linn. 2013. Training communities, training graduate students: The 2012 Oklahoma Breath of Life workshop. In: Language Documentation & Conservation 7. 185–206.","Harvey, Andrew. 2017. Gorwaa, an archive of language and cultural material from the Gorwaa people of Babati (Manyara Region, Tanzania). London: SOAS, Endangered Languages Archive. URL: [https://elar.soas.ac.uk/Collection/MPI1014224]. Accessed on 21.05.2019.","Harvey, Andrew. 2018a. The Gorwaa noun: toward a description of the Gorwaa language. Doctoral dissertation, SOAS, University of London.","Harvey, Andrew. 2018b. \"Pakani: A Gorwaa story.\" In: The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research 11. pp.153-184","Hinton, Leanne. 2001. The use of linguistic archives in language revitalization: The Native California language-restoration workshop. In: Leanne Hinton, and Ken Hale (eds.) 2001.","Hinton, Leanne, and Ken Hale (eds.). 2001. The green book of language revitalization in practice, 419–423. San Diego: Academic Press.","Mous, Maarten, and Lea Zuyderhoudt. 2018. Iraqw Texts in Society. Project description in: Humanities research trainees programme 2018. URL: [https://www.student.universiteitleiden.nl/binaries/content/assets/geesteswetenschappen/studenten-site/rtp/iraqw-texts-in-society.pdf]. Accessed on 21.05.2019.","O'Meara, C., and O.A. González Guadarrama. 2016. \"Accessibility to results and primary data of research on indigenous languages of Mexico.\" In: Pérez Báez, G.; Rogers, C.; Rosés Labrada, J.E. (eds.) 2016. pp.59-80.","Pérez Báez, G.; Rogers, C.; Rosés Labrada, J.E. (eds.) 2016. Language documentation and revitalisation in Latin American contexts. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.","Sammons, Olivia N. & Wesley Y. Leonard. 2015. Breathing new life into Algonquian languages: Lessons from the Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages. In J. Randolph Valentine & Monica Macaulay (eds.) 2015.","Valentine, Randolph J., and Monica Macaulay (eds.). 2015. Papers of the 43rd Annual Algonquian Conference, 207–224. Albany: SUNY Press."]}

The Tanzanian Rift Valley is unique on the continent in that speakers of all major African language phyla have been in contact here for quite some time (c.f. Kießling, Mous, and Nurse 2008, hereafter referred to as KMN 2008). KMN 2008, a foundational work on the study of the Rift Valley as a linguistic area, delimit the Rift as the area in which the following languages are traditionally spoken: Iraqw, Gorwaa, Alagwa, Burunge, (South Cushitic); Nyaturu, Rangi, Mbugwe, Nyilamba, Ihanzu, Kimbu, (Bantu); Sandawe (Khoisan); Datooga (Southern Nilotic); and Hadza (isolate). Caveats in this list include the fact that Datooga is comprised of a group of distinct varieties, as well as that the smaller “Dorobo” languages (genetic affiliation unknown), as well as the likely-extinct languages Aasax and Kw’adza (both probably South-Cushitic) should also be included here. In this talk, we seek to: 1) contextualize the Area in terms of i) geography and environment, ii) its speaker communities, and iii) previous research conducted pertaining to their histories, cultures, and languages; as well as 2) articulate the need for a Rift Valley Network at the current time, as well as describe the current makeup of the Network and the work conducted by its members., Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Griscom, Richard, and Andrew Harvey. 2019. The Tanzanian Rift Valley Area: A prolegomenon for research and a network. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 20/03/2019., {"references": ["Abrahams, R.G. 1967. The peoples of greater Unyamwezi, Tanzania (Nyamwezi, Sukuma, Sumbwa, Kimbu and Konongo). (Ethnographic survey of Africa, East Central Africa, 17.) London: Oxford Univ. Press for the International African Inst. (IAI).", "Akhavan-Zandjani, Firouzeh. 1990. Untersuchungen zur Grammatik des Irangi anhand des Materials aus dem Nachla\u00df Dr.~Paul Berger. (MA thesis, Universit\u00e4t Hamburg; 75pp.)", "Ambrose, Stanley Harmon. 1982. Archaeology and linguistic reconstructions of history in East Africa. In Ehret, Christopher and Merrick Posnansky (eds.), The archaeological and linguistic reconstruction of African history, 104-157. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: Univ. of California Press.", "Anderson, George N. 1942. Tentative studies in Ilamba grammar and phonetics.", "Bagshawe, F.J. 1925. The peoples of the Happy Valley, East Africa, 4: the Goroa and their kindred Hamitic tribes, the Wambulu or Erokh, the Wasi or Alawa, and the Burungi. Journal of the African Soc. 25. 59-74.", "Bagshawe, F.J. 1924/25. The peoples of the Happy Valley, East Africa, the aboriginal races of Kondoa Irangi, 3: the Sandawi. Journal of the African Soc. 24. 219-227, 328-347.", "Bala, G.G. 1998. Hadza stories and songs (translated by Bonny Sands). Los Angeles: Friends of the Hadzabe. (Edited by Bonny Sands & Will Grundy).", "Banti, Giorgio. 1997. Review of Martin Mous 'A Grammar of Iraqw'. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 18. 95-106.", "Baumann, Oscar. 1894. Durch Massailand zur Nilquelle: Reisen und Forschungen der Massai-Expedition des deutschen Antisklaverei-Komite in den Jahren 1891-1893. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.", "Baumstark, Paul. 1900. Die Warangi. Mitt. von Forschungsreisenden und Gelehrten aus den deutschen Schutzgebieten: mit Benutzung amtlicher Quellen 13. 45-60.", "Berger, Paul. 1938. Die s\u00fcdlichsten Hamitensprachen Ostafrikas: \u00dcberblick \u00fcber die vorl\u00e4ufigen Ergebnisse meiner linguistischen Forschungsreise 1934-36 in das abflusslose Gebiet Ostafrikas, II: die Iraku-Gruppe. Forschungen und Fortschritte 14. 392-393.", "Berger, Paul. 1938. 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