In general, you can expect that anything that is grammatically encoded will be able to be expressed in a language that does not encode that distinction with periphrasis.
For instance, Khwe has five past tense time distinctions that are grammatically encoded in verbal suffixes:
/-hã/: the recent and immediate past
/-tà/: the morning of the day of the utterance
/-ǁ'òm̀/: a "remote past" before today
/-tĩ/: another "remote past", for a few days or weeks ago
/-hĩ/: a "far remote past", used to refer to things that happened years ago or even in mythical times.
Does this mean English cannot be used to distinguish events that happened a few days ago vs. a few years ago? Obviously not: we just resort to using expressions like "a few years ago", since we don't have word-parts (morphemes) that encode this variable.
The example you give seems complicated, but this is actually mostly a matter of lexicon rather than grammar: it is an accident of English's history that "taste" can be a noun meaning 'aesthetic preference' and it can also be a verb meaning 'having a flavor'. The two noun-phrases in that sentence are "tuna with good taste" (a noun with a prepositional modifier) and "tuna that tastes good" (a noun with a restrictive relative clause modifier). Riau Indonesian definitely has relative clauses, and I think it also must allow modification of nouns by prepositional phrases, so the only interesting difference between English and Riau Indonesian for this sentence would be the fact that "taste" would (most likely) no longer be the same word in the two phrases.
> the only interesting difference between English and Riau Indonesian for this sentence would be the fact that "taste" would (most likely) no longer be the same word in the two phrases.
Which is I guess my point: puns don't usually translate. So is the underlying reality changed? (I used to wonder about this briefly at times when I was studying Russian in college.)
For instance, Khwe has five past tense time distinctions that are grammatically encoded in verbal suffixes:
Does this mean English cannot be used to distinguish events that happened a few days ago vs. a few years ago? Obviously not: we just resort to using expressions like "a few years ago", since we don't have word-parts (morphemes) that encode this variable.The example you give seems complicated, but this is actually mostly a matter of lexicon rather than grammar: it is an accident of English's history that "taste" can be a noun meaning 'aesthetic preference' and it can also be a verb meaning 'having a flavor'. The two noun-phrases in that sentence are "tuna with good taste" (a noun with a prepositional modifier) and "tuna that tastes good" (a noun with a restrictive relative clause modifier). Riau Indonesian definitely has relative clauses, and I think it also must allow modification of nouns by prepositional phrases, so the only interesting difference between English and Riau Indonesian for this sentence would be the fact that "taste" would (most likely) no longer be the same word in the two phrases.