本文將中國詩學獨有的興還原為一種漢語基本語言現象，即以興為話題＋說明的主題句型在一個以上句子中連續被使用而發生。作者以此解說興體的種種獨有美學特徵：興之現場性乃以話題的有定性為根據；興之歧義性體現了話題與說明之間無定、鬆散關係；興之在平行句間展現的天物與人情「連類」乃以處於句首、以離散並具周遍性的名詞或名詞組的話題為基礎。本文第二節轉向對興如何應對風雅之後從《楚辭》到五七言古詩體和文學功能變化的討論，以凸顯興的起─應結構難容於施事句型。興最終在山水書寫和駢儷對仗的律化環境中重生。本文最後總結中國詩學傳統中的情景理論乃至思想中的互應論，皆以漢語中同一現象為根而長出，透露出華夏民族對天地萬象的解讀。

This article reduces xing 興, a unique rhetorical mode that appears exclusively in traditional Chinese poetry, to a fundamental Chinese linguistic phenomenon, the repeated use of topic-comment sentences which are connected by the nature of the discourse but disconnected due to their cross-referential content. Using topic-comment syntax, the author explains the various aesthetic features of xing, i.e., that the immediate presentness of xing is based on the definiteness of the topic; that the ambiguity of xing embodies the loose and indefinite link between a topic and a comment; that the parallel between a natural phenomenon and human affection is on the basis of the topic noun phrase being generic. The second section of this article turns to discuss how this rhetorical mode was confronted with a changed literary function after the rise of Chuci楚辭 and five-syllable-line poetry in order to highlight the fact that xing is not compatible with subject-predicate syntax. Xing, however, came back to life through the regulating process of Chinese poetry concomitantly with the rise of landscape writing and antithetic parallelism in verse. In conclusion, the article contends that both affection-scene theory in poetics and correlative thinking in philosophy grew out of the same Chinese linguistic roots and both illustrate an ancient Chinese interpretation of the universe.