Here's an alternative/clearer version of my original question:
Consider the following sentence:
Instead of his being stationed on a plank, I want him on a pedestal.
This shows the possessive gerund. However, the "I want him..." being juxtaposed with "his being..." seems awkward (as was pointed out in the ensuing comment section).
It is the stationing that I want to discuss. So, to make it less awkward, instead of using "him" for the subject, since we are using "being stationed" as a noun in the first part, can we use a pronoun for it in the second part?
In other words, can I make the sentence
Instead of his being stationed on a plank, I want [his being stationed] on a pedestal.
where the [text] is replaced by a pronoun (and appropriate grammatical changes).
Is an alternative path better (and what)?
ORIGINAL:
I was writing a question in a different Stack Exchange site and had a doubt about my sentence structure. This is what I typed:
instead of its being defined on an interval [maths], its definition is on an interval [maths]
The first part of the sentence shows the possessive-gerund. I was wondering if I could restructure this sentence as
instead of its being defined on an interval [maths], I want it on an interval [maths]/it is on an interval [maths]
where it refers to the "being-defined"-ness? The reason behind my asking this question is that the reason we use the possessive form is because we are discussing the particular characteristic ("being-defined"-ness) of the subject under scrutiny, so in the next part of the sentence, can we use it to refer to the characteristic without ambiguity? Or can it be confused for the subject? Or does using it make sense only when it is referring to the subject (which makes the most sense to me).
To be honest, using "its definition" in the sentence I originally typed also sounds a little weird to me (I was going to put in "I want it to be defined on..." instead), but I do think that it grammatically agrees with "its being defined".
Ultimately, what I am asking is if "being defined" may be used exactly as a noun might. Because the second sentence certainly makes perfect sense if I had used "definition" instead of "being defined" (with the necessary grammatical changes).