[rspeer]

I believe he's being uncharitable to the descriptive point of view when he calls the prescriptive point of view the "words have meaning" point of view.

To flip the bias there, you could call the prescriptive point of view the "words have meaning ordained by God and it doesn't matter what anyone actually says" point of view, and call the descriptive point of view the "evidence-based" point of view.

When people say "breakfast", do they mean the moment of breaking one's fast? A prescriptivist would say "yes, obviously, it's right there in the word". A descriptivist would say "probably not, because everybody understands what it means to 'skip breakfast'."