Breakdown of De burgemeester draagt de politie op om het gebouw te omsingelen.
het gebouw
the building
de politie
the police
te
to (infinitive marker)
om
in order to
Questions & Answers about De burgemeester draagt de politie op om het gebouw te omsingelen.
How does the verb opdragen connect the mayor, the police, and the action?
Opdragen (to order or command) is a separable verb, so it splits into draagt ... op. It takes an object—in this case, de politie—who receives the command. This object then becomes the "doer" (the semantic subject) of the infinitive clause that follows. The mayor gives the order, but the police execute the action of surrounding the building.
Is the word om strictly necessary before het gebouw te omsingelen?
It is technically optional, but highly recommended. You could grammatically say ...draagt de politie op het gebouw te omsingelen. However, including om makes the boundary between the main clause and the infinitive clause much clearer, which sounds more natural and flows better for Dutch speakers.
The sentence has both om and omsingelen. Why is it te omsingelen rather than putting te inside the verb?
This is a great catch! The first om is the word linking the infinitive clause (om ... te). The verb itself is omsingelen (to surround). Because the stress falls on the second syllable (om-SING-e-len), it is an inseparable verb. Since it can't split, te simply goes in front of the whole word, unlike with separable verbs where te would squeeze between the prefix and the verb root.
In English, we say "the police are". Is de politie treated as singular or plural in Dutch?