Understanding 「彼を見てるのが気の毒なほど悄気てる。」


The sentence

> 彼を見てるのが気の毒なほど悄気てる。

apparently means

> Just seeing him makes me feel bad.

But I'm having troubling parsing it.

**Questions:**

  * Is 「彼を見てるのが気の毒な」 a complete unit/logical clause (連体形)? Or is 「彼を見てるのが」 the subject of 「悄気てる」?
  * Is の being placed after 「彼を見てるの」to nominalize that clause, so that が can mark it as the subject?
  * My best (literal) parsing of this sentence is

> The extent of (the "seeing him is bad" thing) is depressing.

which doesn't quite make sense. Does anyone have any advice on how to better
parse this sentence?




You should understand the ほど adverbially, i.e., the same as ほどに.

The subject of しょげてる should be _he_. Expanding very literally, it is

  * (彼は、)(私が)彼を見てるのが(私にとって)気の毒なほど悄気てる。

which translates to

  * He is dejected to the extent that looking at him makes me sorry.




You should understand the ほど adverbially, i.e., the same as ほどに.

The subject of しょげてる should be _he_. Expanding very literally, it is

  * (彼は、)(私が)彼を見てるのが(私にとって)気の毒なほど悄気てる。

which translates to

  * He is dejected to the extent that looking at him makes me sorry.

