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This was answered and solved by reswild (Web developer at Wild Web, Oslo, Norway). Many thanks for his answer at http://civicrm.stackexchange.com/questions/10569/help-fatal-error-doing-an-export-civi-4-7-4

Below is the solution:

Line 435 in CRM/Export/BAO/Export.php that your error message is referring to says:

if (!empty(self::defaultReturnProperty($exportMode))) {
This will give an error in all PHP versions below 5.5. From the PHP manual (http://php.net/manual/en/function.empty.php):

Prior to PHP 5.5, empty() only supports variables; anything else will result in a parse error
You should be able to fix this by replacing lines 435-437 in Export.php with something like

  $key = self::defaultReturnProperty($exportMode);
  if ($key) {
    $returnProperties[$key] = 1;
  }