No subject

is the doer and who is the done-to.  Active parties are -ers, -ors, and
-ists, while passive parties are -ents, -ees, and -ects.  (As a linguistic
determinist, the prof was convinced that social hierarchy was of a piece
with the language that conceived it.)

I'm not sure where we get the -yer suffix, which makes a tool into an
occupation:
	bowyer
	lawyer
	sawyer

I was trying to explain some of these patterns to my 2nd grader, who is
wrestling with the subtleties of spelling.   Do any of you know of a good
book on such things?  Etymologies are usually word by word, and an Old
English grammar would probably not address modern usage.  But, I bet
somebody, somewhere has a treatise on such patterns.  What's more, if there
is such a book, I'd bet someone in this group has read it.

Many thanks,

Charles Fleming