This paper presents a lexicalist analysis of Bulgarian definiteness marking, arguing against the claim—made in Embick and Noyer 2001—that the definite article's distribution must be stated in syntactic terms. The paper derives the distribution of the affix through the interaction of a lexical rule with syntactic constraints on DP licensing. The analysis maintains compatibility with a lexicalist set of assumptions, and addresses some aspects of the Embick and Noyer (2001) approach that remain problematic due to the absence of pre-syntactic composition. The authors conclude that a distinction between lexical and syntactic modes of composition allows for a more elegant account of the article's empirical properties, providing further support for a theoretical distinction between (postlexical) clitics and affixes.