diff --git a/include/analyzers/analyzer.h b/include/analyzers/analyzer.h
index d37ac4589..812f3dbe5 100644
--- a/include/analyzers/analyzer.h
+++ b/include/analyzers/analyzer.h
@@ -71,6 +71,14 @@ class analyzer
     static std::unique_ptr<token_stream>
         default_filter_chain(const cpptoml::table& config);
 
+    /**
+     * @param config The config group used to create the analyzer from
+     * @return the default filter chain for unigram words for this version
+     * of MeTA, based on a config object
+     */
+    static std::unique_ptr<token_stream>
+        default_unigram_chain(const cpptoml::table& config);
+
     /**
      * @param global The original config object with all parameters
      * @param config The config group used to create the filters from
diff --git a/include/analyzers/tokenizers/icu_tokenizer.h b/include/analyzers/tokenizers/icu_tokenizer.h
index b825a4d17..7391c2844 100644
--- a/include/analyzers/tokenizers/icu_tokenizer.h
+++ b/include/analyzers/tokenizers/icu_tokenizer.h
@@ -39,9 +39,16 @@ namespace tokenizers
  * Optional config parameters:
  *
  * ~~~ toml
- * language = "en" # lowercase two-letter or three-letter ISO-639 code
- * country = "US"  # uppercase two-letter ISO-3116 code. If specified, the
- *                 # config must also specify the language.
+ * # lowercase two-letter or three-letter ISO-639 code
+ * language = "en"
+ *
+ * # uppercase two-letter ISO-3116 code. If specified, the config must also
+ * # specify the language.
+ * country = "US"
+ *
+ * # whether to suppress the generation of "<s>" or "</s>"; useful for
+ * # information retrieval with unigrams. Default is false.
+ * suppress-tags = true
  * ~~~
  */
 class icu_tokenizer : public util::clonable<token_stream, icu_tokenizer>
@@ -49,14 +56,17 @@ class icu_tokenizer : public util::clonable<token_stream, icu_tokenizer>
   public:
     /**
      * Creates an icu_tokenizer.
+     * @param suppress_tags Whether to suppress "<s>" and "</s"> generation
      */
-    icu_tokenizer();
+    explicit icu_tokenizer(bool suppress_tags = false);
 
     /**
      * Creates an icu_tokenizer with a specific segmenter.
      * @param segmenter The segmenter to use.
+     * @param suppress_tags Whether to suppress "<s>" and "</s>" generation
      */
-    icu_tokenizer(utf::segmenter segmenter);
+    explicit icu_tokenizer(utf::segmenter segmenter,
+                           bool suppress_tags = false);
 
     /**
      * Copies an icu_tokenizer.
diff --git a/src/analyzers/analyzer.cpp b/src/analyzers/analyzer.cpp
index c40626912..a52e792ce 100644
--- a/src/analyzers/analyzer.cpp
+++ b/src/analyzers/analyzer.cpp
@@ -45,24 +45,42 @@ io::parser analyzer::create_parser(const corpus::document& doc,
                           io::parser::input_type::File};
 }
 
+namespace
+{
 std::unique_ptr<token_stream>
-    analyzer::default_filter_chain(const cpptoml::table& config)
+    add_default_filters(std::unique_ptr<token_stream> tokenizer,
+                        const cpptoml::table& config)
 {
-
     auto stopwords = config.get_as<std::string>("stop-words");
 
     std::unique_ptr<token_stream> result;
 
-    result = make_unique<tokenizers::icu_tokenizer>();
-    result = make_unique<filters::lowercase_filter>(std::move(result));
+    result = make_unique<filters::lowercase_filter>(std::move(tokenizer));
     result = make_unique<filters::alpha_filter>(std::move(result));
     result = make_unique<filters::length_filter>(std::move(result), 2, 35);
     result = make_unique<filters::list_filter>(std::move(result), *stopwords);
     result = make_unique<filters::porter2_stemmer>(std::move(result));
+    return result;
+}
+}
+
+std::unique_ptr<token_stream>
+    analyzer::default_filter_chain(const cpptoml::table& config)
+{
+    auto tokenizer = make_unique<tokenizers::icu_tokenizer>();
+    auto result = add_default_filters(std::move(tokenizer), config);
     result = make_unique<filters::empty_sentence_filter>(std::move(result));
     return result;
 }
 
+std::unique_ptr<token_stream>
+    analyzer::default_unigram_chain(const cpptoml::table& config)
+{
+    // suppress "<s>", "</s>"
+    auto tokenizer = make_unique<tokenizers::icu_tokenizer>(true);
+    return add_default_filters(std::move(tokenizer), config);
+}
+
 std::unique_ptr<token_stream>
     analyzer::load_filter(std::unique_ptr<token_stream> src,
                           const cpptoml::table& config)
@@ -83,6 +101,8 @@ std::unique_ptr<token_stream>
     {
         if (*check == "default-chain")
             return default_filter_chain(global);
+        else if (*check == "default-unigram-chain")
+            return default_unigram_chain(global);
         else
             throw analyzer_exception{"unknown filter option: " + *check};
     }
diff --git a/src/analyzers/tokenizers/icu_tokenizer.cpp b/src/analyzers/tokenizers/icu_tokenizer.cpp
index 66c632873..b0c392743 100644
--- a/src/analyzers/tokenizers/icu_tokenizer.cpp
+++ b/src/analyzers/tokenizers/icu_tokenizer.cpp
@@ -29,9 +29,13 @@ const std::string icu_tokenizer::id = "icu-tokenizer";
 class icu_tokenizer::impl
 {
   public:
-    impl() = default;
+    impl(bool suppress_tags) : suppress_tags_{suppress_tags}
+    {
+        // nothing
+    }
 
-    impl(utf::segmenter segmenter) : segmenter_{std::move(segmenter)}
+    explicit impl(utf::segmenter segmenter, bool suppress_tags)
+        : suppress_tags_{suppress_tags}, segmenter_{std::move(segmenter)}
     {
         // nothing
     }
@@ -55,7 +59,8 @@ class icu_tokenizer::impl
         segmenter_.set_content(content);
         for (const auto& sentence : segmenter_.sentences())
         {
-            tokens_.emplace_back("<s>");
+            if (!suppress_tags_)
+                tokens_.emplace_back("<s>");
             for (const auto& word : segmenter_.words(sentence))
             {
                 auto wrd = segmenter_.content(word);
@@ -70,7 +75,8 @@ class icu_tokenizer::impl
 
                 tokens_.emplace_back(std::move(wrd));
             }
-            tokens_.emplace_back("</s>");
+            if (!suppress_tags_)
+                tokens_.emplace_back("</s>");
         }
     }
 
@@ -95,6 +101,9 @@ class icu_tokenizer::impl
     }
 
   private:
+    /// Whether or not to suppress "<s>" or "</s>" generation
+    const bool suppress_tags_;
+
     /// UTF segmenter to use for this tokenizer
     utf::segmenter segmenter_;
 
@@ -102,10 +111,13 @@ class icu_tokenizer::impl
     std::deque<std::string> tokens_;
 };
 
-icu_tokenizer::icu_tokenizer() = default;
+icu_tokenizer::icu_tokenizer(bool suppress_tags) : impl_{suppress_tags}
+{
+    // nothing
+}
 
-icu_tokenizer::icu_tokenizer(utf::segmenter segmenter)
-    : impl_{std::move(segmenter)}
+icu_tokenizer::icu_tokenizer(utf::segmenter segmenter, bool suppress_tags)
+    : impl_{std::move(segmenter), suppress_tags}
 {
     // nothing
 }
@@ -140,6 +152,10 @@ std::unique_ptr<token_stream>
 {
     auto language = config.get_as<std::string>("language");
     auto country = config.get_as<std::string>("country");
+    bool suppress_tags = false;
+
+    if (auto stags = config.get_as<bool>("suppress-tags"))
+        suppress_tags = *stags;
 
     using exception = token_stream::token_stream_exception;
 
@@ -149,12 +165,14 @@ std::unique_ptr<token_stream>
     if (language)
     {
         if (country)
-            return make_unique<icu_tokenizer>(utf::segmenter{*language, *country});
+            return make_unique<icu_tokenizer>(
+                utf::segmenter{*language, *country}, suppress_tags);
         else
-            return make_unique<icu_tokenizer>(utf::segmenter{*language});
+            return make_unique<icu_tokenizer>(utf::segmenter{*language},
+                                              suppress_tags);
     }
 
-    return make_unique<icu_tokenizer>();
+    return make_unique<icu_tokenizer>(suppress_tags);
 }
 }
 }