This paper studies the internal structure of definite articles and demon-stratives in twelve Germanic languages. Examining synchronic and diachronic data as well as systematic gaps, it seeks to illuminate the nature of definiteness markers and inflections, d- and -er in German d-er ‘the' and d-ies-er ‘this', with the goal of identifying some consequences for the syntax of the determiner phrase as a whole. Arguing that definite-ness markers are semantically vacuous elements, the paper proposes that articles involve an inflectional head in the syntax and demonstratives consist of an inflectional and a deictic head. Isomorphic correspondences between overt components and abstract syntactic structure may be partially or completely “masked” by postsyntactic operations.*