ABSTRACT
When I sat down to write this paper, my task turned out not to be as straightforward as I had expected. I had assumed that what is meant by "holding" was relatively clear and simple. I discovered, however, that the concept of "holding" as used in the literature covers many things and that it belongs to that class of concepts that have an "elastic" meaning space, that is to say, a meaning that changes according to the specific context in which they are employed.
