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I have this sentence from tangorin. It an example sentence from sabishii:

彼女は彼が寂しく思い忘れられてしまうのではないかと思ったのです

The translation is:

She thought he might be feeling lonely and forgotten.

I don't get this part: 寂しく思い忘れられてしまうのではないか
What is the omoi part role in this? How come this translation got like that? There's nothing connecting 寂しく思い and 忘れられてしまうのではない, is this an idiomatic expression?

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    I think it is 彼女は彼が寂しく思い、忘れられてしまうのではないかと思ったのです. Dec 2, 2016 at 18:04
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    (I might be misreading the English translation but) If the English sentence means "She thought he might be feeling {lonely and forgotten}", ie "She thought he might be feeling lonely + She thought he might be feeling forgotten", then the Japanese sentence should be like 「彼女は彼が寂しく思い、忘れられてしまうのではないかと思っていると思ったのです。」 --- 「彼女は彼が寂しく思い忘れられてしまうのではないかと思ったのです」 doesn't make much sense to me.
    – chocolate
    Dec 3, 2016 at 1:10

1 Answer 1

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「彼女は彼が寂しく思い忘れられてしまうのではないかと思ったのです。」

is an unusually ambiguous sentence to be used as an example sentence in a dictionary.

More specifically, I do not think the correlation between "feeling loney" and "getting forgotten" is universally understood (and therefore unsuitable for use in a dictionary). This, I feel, is the reason that I, though a native speaker, have no idea who is getting forgotten by whom here.

This sentence could mean both:

"She thought that he might feel lonely and (he also) might be forgotten." and

"She thought that he might feel loney and that she might be forgotten by him."

And neither one makes much sense to me.

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