Syntax for free?

This week's edition of Nature features a News & Views piece by Ricard Solé about a word-association matrix created by Ferrer i Cancho, Riordan, and Bollobás which seems to suggest "the possibility that early 'protolanguage' might have been ready-made for the full development of syntax." I haven't yet read the original study, nor do I understand the gist of it particularly well, but it seems like an interesting idea. The references, for those of you who are interested:

Solé, Ricard. Language: Syntax for free? Nature 434, 289 (17 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434289a

Ferrer i Cancho, R., Riordan, O. & Bollobás, B. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B doi:10.1098/rspb.2004.2957 (2005).

I have a PDF of the Nature piece.