Learn English – Syntax analysis of the sentence

commassyntactic-analysis

I'm trying to analyse the following sentence.

To understand the importance of this event you should know all the facts.

It seems to me that this sentence is complex, and «To understand importance of this event» is dependent adverbial clause. But then, as my grammar book says, it would require a comma before «you», since the dependent adverbial clause comes before the independent clause.

So, please help to do the syntax analysis of this sentence and to understand whether the comma is needed.

Best Answer

You can divide this sentence into two separate clauses.

The dependent clause, which provides the reason, is:

To understand the importance of this event

while the independent (statement) clause is:

you should know all the facts

Identifying these two separate clauses, it is then clear that a comma should be introduced between them, by standard rules.

Hence it's most correct to write:

To understand the importance of this event, you should know all the facts.

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