UML is defined by OMG in two documents (http://www.omg.org/spec/uml): UML Infrastructure and UML Supestructure. Any documentation may not be official.
Section 14.3.3 of the UML Add-in says:
For the general situation, when the order of occurrence of events (or other nested fragments) on one Lifeline is not significant, there is a conditional reduction for parallel combined fragments. This means that in a given area of the Lifeline core, all directly contained fragments are considered separate operands of a parallel combined fragment.
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