A dependent-marking language has grammatical markers of agreement and case government between the words of phrases that tend to appear more on dependents than on heads.
The distinction between head-marking and dependent-marking was first explored by Johanna Nichols in 1986,[1] and has since become a central criterion in language typology in which languages are classified according to whether they are more head-marking or dependent-marking.
English has few inflectional markers of agreement and so can be construed as zero-marking much of the time.
Dependent-marking, however, occurs when a singular or plural noun demands the singular or plural form of the demonstrative determiner this/these or that/those and when a verb or preposition demands the subject or object form of a personal pronoun: I/me, he/him, she/her, they/them, who/whom.
A noun marks its dependent determiner: The noun marks the dependent determiner in gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter) and number (singular or plural).