Dr. Broadwell’s primary research agenda focuses on endangered languages, primarily Native American languages of the United States and Mesoamerica. He is interested in the issues of integrating language description and documentation with contemporary work in linguistic theory.
His long-term descriptive commitments have been to grammatical and lexical descriptions of Choctaw, contemporary Zapotec (San Dionisio Ocotepec, Macuiltianguis, and Sierra Juarez varieties), Colonial Valley Zapotec, Copala Triqui, and Timucua, with occasional work on grammatical issues in a number of other languages around the world (Mon, Kaqchikel, Kiche, Turkish, Crow, Creek).
From a theoretical point of view, he has been interested in word order, causative structures, lexical semantics, negation, diachronic syntax, and syntactic typology. In collaboration with colleagues in History, Anthropology, Computer Science, Education, Communication, and Psychology, he has also worked on issues in the interpretation of historical texts, linguistic and archaeology reconstruction, computational sociolinguistics, language in the classroom, and the computational identification of metaphors.
Recent conference papers
- Broadwell, George Aaron. 2025. Understanding Muskogean word avoidances: Linguistic and anthropological evidence. Presented at 27th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Santiago, Chile. August 2025. [Draft paper] [ICHL2025 Broadwell slides]
- Broadwell, George Aaron. 2025. Connecting Native language documents with contemporary communities: The role of legacy materials in Native history. Keynote address at the Workshop on American Indian Languages (WAIL). Santa Barbara, CA. May 2025. [2025 Broadwell WAIL keynote]
- Broadwell, George Aaron. 2025. Reading Florida’s First Native Authors: Towards an Understanding of Timucua Literature. Gannon lecture. University of Florida. April 2025. [Gannon lecture 2025]
- Dubcovsky, Alejandra and George Aaron Broadwell. 2025. ‘When the Sky Speaks & the Body Trembles’: Timucua Spiritual Practices in Colonial Florida. Presented at the Early Modern Studies Institute American Origins Seminar, University of Southern California. Los Angeles, CA. April 2025.
- Dubcovsky, Alejandra and George Aaron Broadwell. 2025. Have you listened to the sound of the birds? Timucua spiritual practices and Spanish religious suppression. Presented at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese colloquium. UCLA. Los Angeles, CA. April 2025.
- Lillehaugen, Brook; George Aaron Broadwell; Felipe Lopez; Moisés García Guzmán; Esénia Bañuelos, Lillian E. Chan, Madeline Murnane, Roma J. Sarathi, and Michaela Richter. 2025. Hacía un diccionario digital basado en el corpus del zapoteco colonial del valle. Presented at Coloquio sobre Lenguas Otomangues y Vecinos X. Oaxaca, Mexico. May 2025.
- Broadwell, George Aaron. 2025. The Fifth and Sixth Days of Creation in Florida: A Timucua Contribution to Hexameral Literature. Presented at Classical Learning in an Amerindian World: Conversions of Language in Mexico and Florida. Flagler College, St Augustine, FL 2025.
- Broadwell, George Aaron and Alejandra Dubcovsky. 2025. Timucua spiritual practices and Spanish religious suppresssion. Presented at the Elling Eide Center, Sarasota, FL. Feb 2025