But doing so reduces the clarity of the language, by conflating two different meanings.
I have to disagree with this. I’m also someone who’s bothered when words with multiple distinct meanings get merged, but I don’t think this can be described as a case of that. (I suppose the most obvious objection is that this does not reduce the quality of the language because there is nothing to compare to. If English ever had these other words you suggest, it can’t have been for hundreds of years at least.)
In any case, these words are just function words, they’re just relative pronouns. Merging different relative pronouns doesn’t add extra meanings—most of them could be pretty well expressed with “what”—it just forces you to include the information even if it’s not relevant (maybe we don’t care if what did this is animate or not), while allowing some things to become slightly shorter by being implicit (we can say “he who did this” rather than “What person did this”. This wouldn’t work as well with “whatever”, but that’s a quirk of how the word is formed in English rather than any general feature of relative pronouns.)
Basically you’re just introducing another unavoidable; it doesn’t “add meaning” any more than does English’s insistence that all finite verbs have tense.
I have to disagree with this. I’m also someone who’s bothered when words with multiple distinct meanings get merged, but I don’t think this can be described as a case of that. (I suppose the most obvious objection is that this does not reduce the quality of the language because there is nothing to compare to. If English ever had these other words you suggest, it can’t have been for hundreds of years at least.)
In any case, these words are just function words, they’re just relative pronouns. Merging different relative pronouns doesn’t add extra meanings—most of them could be pretty well expressed with “what”—it just forces you to include the information even if it’s not relevant (maybe we don’t care if what did this is animate or not), while allowing some things to become slightly shorter by being implicit (we can say “he who did this” rather than “What person did this”. This wouldn’t work as well with “whatever”, but that’s a quirk of how the word is formed in English rather than any general feature of relative pronouns.)
Basically you’re just introducing another unavoidable; it doesn’t “add meaning” any more than does English’s insistence that all finite verbs have tense.