at: http://bit.ly/code-icebreaker

lingua_nugget.py

from itertools import chain, product
from re import match, findall

GRAMMAR = '''
<sentence> ::= <noun phrase=""> <verb phrase="">
<noun> ::= "boy " | "troll " | "moon " | "telescope "
<transitive verb=""> ::= "hits " | "sees "
<intransitive verb=""> ::= "runs " | "sleeps "
<adjective> ::= "big " | "red "
<adverb> ::= "quickly " | "quietly "
<determiner> ::= "a " | "that " | "each " | "every "
<pronoun> ::= "he " | "she " | "it "
<noun phrase=""> ::= <determiner> <noun> | <determiner> <adjective> <noun>
<verb phrase=""> ::= <intransitive verb=""> | <transitive verb=""> <noun phrase="">
'''

def parse(g):
    return dict([(w.strip(), [findall(r'(<.+?>|".+?")', s) 
                              for s in m.split('|')]) 
                                  for w, m in [d.split('::=') 
                                                for d in g.strip().splitlines()]])


def generate(term):
    val = findall(r'"(.*?)"', term) \
            if match('".*', term) \
            else chain(*[map(''.join, product(*map(generate, p))) 
                         for p in syntax[term]])
    return val

syntax = parse(GRAMMAR)
print list(generate('<sentence>'))