The verb consist is never used without a preposition and it usually takes either of or in. In your example, it should be consist of. Thus, the first sentence is correct while the second is wrong. From the Oxford Dictionaries:
1 (consist of) be composed or made up of
- (consist in) have as an essential feature
2 (consist with) archaic be consistent with
I should also add that it is probably not uncommon for some speakers to drop the of in conversation, but this should by all means be avoided in written contexts.
Why isn't near, near to and nearby always interchangeable?
They can precede the noun. right
I follow the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:
1)- near as an adjective: "the near[by] shop"
2)- near as an adverb: "he lives near", "the hour is near", "near dead"
3)- near as a preposition: "a house near the river"
in some contexts you can use near (to): "come near to me!" "*a house near/close to the station". US speakers prefer 'close to', and sometimes 'close to' sounds better anyway: e.g. "The situation is close to critical"
4)- 'nearby' is just an adverb. As a preposition it is dialectal, and a spelling variant of the adjectival phrase near by = 'close at hand'.
Those guidelines should solve most of your problems:
When they are adverbs they can follow the noun. wrong
- The railway station is nearby [adverb]
- The railway station is nearby my house. wrong
- The railway station is near my house [preposition]
- The railway station is near to my house [variant]
probably there is a typo, they never follow. If you are referring to station, remember that near is the predicate.
But we don't normally say:
?Meet me at the near railway station
(this is an adjective not an adverb)
The accepted version is:
Meet me at the railway station nearby (adverb)
Meet me at the nearby railway station (adjective)
Merriam-Webster also confirms that in the US nearby cannot be a preposition, therefore the examples in the other answer should be considered wrong, unless an explanation is provided.
- He ran nearby a river.
- She proceeded nearby him
These are prepositions and 'nearby' cannot be used as a preposition; 'alongside', 'near' is appropriate there. Besides this, the fact that the verb is in/transitive is not relevant: "she stood near" "she came near". What is fundamental is the distinction between 'adverb' and 'preposition'
For the case of whether "He ran near" is AmEng, I don't know. In terms of whether it is grammatical, I offer:
near
- can be used either transitively with a subject, or non-transitively without a subject:
transitive: He ran near me.
intransitive: He ran near.
This does not make sense. The verb is intransitive in both cases, in the first case the verb is intransitive and 'near' is a preposition. It is transitive here: "He ran a great race"
Best Answer
Google gives 22 different prepositional usages for by, including
and 5 prepositional usages for near, including
These two are the only cases where it's even feasible to use either - but even then they're not usually interchangeable. Partly because by normally means right next to, with nothing in between, whereas near simply means close to (where close may be a very subjective assessment).
In dialectal usages (Welsh sit by 'ere, the spiritual Kumbaya / come by here), most speakers would use nearby/near here (or perhaps over here, since it's about moving from there just as much as coming here).
Regarding OP's specific examples - I think the default is to use near. Idiomat/dialect favours by in some contexts, but normally only with very close proximity. And we don't normally use by to indicate proximity to anything "moveable" (such as a person). Idiomatically, we use pronouns such as me/him to mean my/his house, but it's still usually near me, not by me.
Nearby is more of an adjective/adverb than a preposition - it seems to have gradually evolved into its current "one-word" status over the past century. OP's example is non-standard - you can speak of a house nearby, or a nearby house, where nearby means near here (or near wherever is being spoken of). But we don't normally speak of a house nearby the shop.