A dependent-marking language is one where the grammatical marks showing relations between different constituents of a phrase tend to be placed on the dependents or modifiers, rather than the heads of the phrase in question. In a noun phrase, the head is the main noun and the dependents are the article, the adjectives, the possessives, etc. In a verb phrase the head is the verb and the dependents are its arguments (subject, object, etc.).
A typical example of almost pure dependent marking is Japanese, where each part of a sentence is supposed to be marked for its function (topic, subject, object, complement), while the verb is completely devoid of morphological marks showing person, number, gender, or any other property of the arguments.
| 画家 | が | 絵 | を | 描いた |
| gaka | -ga | e | -o | kaita |
| artist | -subject | painting | -object | drew |
Less pure examples are Czech, Latin, Tamil and German.