This paper argues for a particular semantic decomposition of morphological
definiteness. I propose that the meaning of ‘the’ comprises two distinct compositional
operations. The first builds a set of witnesses that satisfy the restricting noun phrase.
The second tests this set for uniqueness. The motivation for decomposing the denotation
of the definite determiner in this way comes from split-scope intervention effects.
The two components—the selection of witnesses on the one hand and the counting of
witnesses on the other—may take effect at different points in the composition of a constituent,
and this has non-trivial semantic consequences when other operators inside
the DP take action in between them. In particular, I analyze well-known examples of
mutually recursive definite descriptions like ‘the rabbit in the hat’ (when there are two
rabbits and two hats but only one rabbit in a hat and only one hat with a rabbit in it)
as examples of definites whose referent-introducing and referent-testing components
are interleaved rather than nested. I further demonstrate that this picture leads to a new
theory of relative superlative descriptions like ‘the kid who climbed the highest tree’
(when there is no highest tree per se, only a highest tree-climbing kid), which explains
the previously mysterious role of the definite determiner in licensing such readings.

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• Split-scope definites: Relative superlatives and Haddock descriptions