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I've found dictionary entries supporting both situations: for adjective: http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/intrigued for verb: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/intrigue

I'd go with past participle form of the verb "to intrigue" in the passive voice, used as an adjective in this sentence. Does that make sense?

Thank you!

  • If you see "intrigued" as an adjective in your example, then it's an adjectival passive (as opposed to a verbal passive). The salient interpretation here is that it's an adjective; a more likely verbal passive would be I was intrigued by your phone call. – BillJ Mar 25 '16 at 10:45
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    It's a predicate adjective, formed from the past participle of a verb; that doesn't make it passive. Virtually all predicate adjectives are intransitive, and passive only happens to transitive predicates. Calling it a passive is confusing and "adjectival passive" is not standard terminology. As noted, a real passive can have a by-phrase expressing an agent. – John Lawler Mar 25 '16 at 11:11
  • @John Lawler 'Adjectival passive' is the term used by Huddleston & Pullum in their award-winning Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. That makes it pretty 'standard terminology' to me. See also link – BillJ Mar 25 '16 at 11:24
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    It's standard if you follow H&P on it. Most don't. They changed terminology quite a lot, and while I like many of their changes ('intransitive preposition' for phrasal verb 'particle' is a winner), they're never going to dethrone restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses, for instance. And using "Passive" for a particular variety of predicate adjective seems strange; passive is a construction, not a subclass of adjectives. – John Lawler Mar 25 '16 at 12:26
  • @John Lawler MIT use the term too (see my earlier link) and Stanford: link. As H&P tell us, adjectival passives are only passive in a derivative sense; they belong to the complex-intransitive construction. The term adjectival passive only applies to the predicative complement ("very worried" in "They were very worried"). Thus the clause "They were very worried" is not itself an adjectival passive - it merely contains one. – BillJ Mar 25 '16 at 14:23
  • I see that Huddleston & Pullum are held in high prestige by some. The question is whether all those new terms such as infinitival or adjectival passive will stand the test of time. I doubt it. – rogermue Mar 25 '16 at 15:41
  • @rogermue What are you talking about? "Infinitival" is just an adjective from the noun "infinitive"; it's in the Oxford dictionary as a derivative of "infinitive", here: linkAnd in MW, here: link, and other dictionaries too. And 'adjectival passive' is a very common term. Check out the two links I provided to JL earlier (one of which was to Stanford University). Btw, CGEL was published in 2002, so it's already stood the test of 14 years! – BillJ Mar 25 '16 at 17:23
  • @John Lawler Aargh! Arriving early at the lake, we walked around. // Arriving early at the lake, we walked around it. 'Intransitive prepositions' are not accepted by all as a sound approach. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 25 '16 at 17:59

1 Answers1

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Intrigue is a regular transitive verb.

Its past-participle intrigued, at times behaves adjectively as any other past participle does.

WS2
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    How does this answer this specific question? – Edwin Ashworth Mar 25 '16 at 17:42
  • @EdwinAshworth Perfectly, I would have thought. Intrigued is just like any other past participle. Whether you call it an adjective in certain contexts is moot. – WS2 Mar 25 '16 at 17:52
  • In 'When we arrived, we saw the window was broken', 'broken' is adjectival. In 'The window was broken by the golf-ball', 'broken' is verbal. In 'The window was broken', 'broken' is indeterminate. How does your answer answer OP's specific question? – Edwin Ashworth Mar 25 '16 at 18:03
  • @EdwinAshworth Ok. I take your point. Perhaps I did misunderstand the question. The answer is past participle, unless he/she was in a pre-existent state of intrigue, at the moment they got called in. – WS2 Mar 25 '16 at 19:05