[…]there dwelt in a city of the cities of China a man which was a tailor, withal a pauper, and he had one son, Alaeddin hight.

I'm not a big fan of government-binding syntactic theory in its extremes, but I still don't see why Chomsky is filed under prescriptivism. He is not a prescriptivist, or even a lousy commafucker (that last phrase courtesy of Fred Landman, formerly of Cornell University).

Henry the Eight add[ed] the portcluse to his current money, as a character of his peculiar title to this dition

Ake, ake, ake, said Von Tempsky, weary over the camp-fire. Has there been anything like it since the days of the old Greeks? What madness makes you kill such men when you may want them to fight for you some day?