Breakdown of Они изучали собор, построенный в прошлом веке.
они
they
изучать
to study
в
on / during (a time period)
век
century
собор
cathedral
построить
to build (perfective)
прошлый
last, past
Questions & Answers about Они изучали собор, построенный в прошлом веке.
How would this sentence look if we used a который clause instead of the participle?
It would be Они изучали собор, который был построен в прошлом веке (or ...который построили...). Transforming this relative clause into the single participle построенный is exactly what syntactic reduction is. It makes the sentence more concise and is very common in written Russian.
What case is построенный in, and why?
It is in the accusative case to agree with собор, which is the direct object of изучали. Because собор is a masculine inanimate noun, its accusative form looks exactly like the nominative. The participle matches this by taking the masculine inanimate accusative ending -ый.
Why does построенный have a double -нн-?
It is a long-form past passive participle formed from the perfective verb построить (to build). For perfective verbs ending in -ить, we typically drop the -и- and add -енн- to create this adjective-like form. The double -нн- marks it as a full participle directly modifying a noun, rather than a short-form participle used as a predicate.
Is the comma before построенный strictly necessary?
Yes. When a participial phrase (the participle plus its dependent words, like в прошлом веке) comes after the noun it describes, it must be separated by a comma. If you moved the phrase before the noun, like in Они изучали построенный в прошлом веке собор, you would drop the comma.
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