The present study investigates the autonomous contribution of syntax and pragmatic to the acquisition of the Hebrew definite article. Hebrew, unlike many Germanic and Romance languages, has only a definite article and does not mark indefiniteness. Moreover, non-discourse related definite nouns, like the sun or the moon, do not necessarily require a definite article. Thus, Hebrew speaking children might get conflicting input on the content of D, and the syntactically mandatory use of the definite article, leading to a later acquisition of the syntactic aspects of definiteness vs. the pragmatic ones. Specifically, we show that children's knowledge of the pragmatic concept of non-shared knowledge (Scheffer 1997), and the syntactic properties of D, are acquired separately. 40 Hebrew speaking children aged 2-5 were presented with an elicited production task which checks their use of the definite article in definite discourse related and non-discourse related contexts and in indefinite referential and non-referential contexts. Our study shows how the levels of referentiality, marked as syntactic features of D, and the concept of non-shared knowledge interact in licensing the use of the definite article in Hebrew, suggesting that pragmatic principles and syntactic knowledge are acquired separately. The findings also teach us about the separation of linguistically related pragmatic principles like the concept of non-shared knowledge from cognitively related ones.