Breakdown of Okazało się, że współczesna koncepcja opisująca ten proces jest błędna.
być
to be
ten
this (m)
że
that
okazać się
to turn out (perf)
Questions & Answers about Okazało się, że współczesna koncepcja opisująca ten proces jest błędna.
How does opisująca replace a relative clause here, and what would the unreduced version look like?
opisująca is an active adjectival participle meaning "describing." It directly modifies koncepcja. Without this syntactic reduction, you would use a standard relative clause with która (which/that): ...że współczesna koncepcja, która opisuje ten proces, jest błędna. Using the participle makes the sentence more concise and is a hallmark of B2-level written Polish.
Why is opisująca in the nominative case, but ten proces is in the accusative?
Adjectival participles have a dual grammatical nature. Because opisująca acts as an adjective describing the main subject koncepcja, it must match it by taking the feminine nominative form. However, because it is derived from the verb opisywać (to describe), it still acts like a verb by requiring its own direct object in the accusative case, which gives us ten proces.
Does the past tense of okazało się change how we use the participle opisująca?
No. Active participles ending in -ący/ąca/ące express an ongoing state or an action happening at the same time as the main context. Even though the realization happened in the past (okazało się), the concept currently or generally describes the process, so this imperfective participle is correct. If the describing was a completed past action, you couldn't use this participle and would have to revert to a relative clause like która opisała.