Understanding 「彼を見てるのが気の毒なほど悄気てる。」

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.