Hi Myid
myid“I can find many examples in which bare infinitive is
followed by than.”
I assume you meant to say "in which
than is
followed by a bare infinitive".
I think CB has given you good examples that illustrate the logical omission of "to" before the base form of a verb in many cases.
In addition, I'd like to add that there are simply a number of grammatical situations in which you can choose either the to-infinitive or the bare infinitive. So, why don't you just look at the word "to" as having been ellided rather than drive yourself crazy over the question?
(Note that I used "rather than drive" in my last sentence.)
I notice that all of your examples contain "much more than simply", so it seems appropriate to consider the entire phrase, and not just the word "than" alone. In addition, it seems to me that the use of "simply" may be significant in your sentences.
Now, some may argue that what we have in your sentences, as well as in my "rather than drive" sentence, is simply a situation in which the word "to" has been ellided or is simply optional. Some may argue that in my sentence the use of the base form of the verb is simply good parallel structure (i.e. "Why don't you look... rather than drive..."). However, I would suggest that all of those sentences also smack of the subjunctive. And as you may know, the present subjunctive is identical in form to the bare infinitive.
The phrase "much more than simply (do)" suggests that the speaker is stating something that is contrary to what someone else may believe or to what someone else has actually stated as fact. My sentence used the phrase "rather than", and my sentence boils down to the idea that "I recommend that you not do X, but that you do Y instead" (i.e. subjunctive use of "do").
Let's look at your NPR sentence.
myid “NPR has done much more than simply repurpose its own material for podcasts.”
That sentence might be seen as a contradiction of sorts in that the speaker basically says that "NPR did not simply repurpose". The sentence suggests that the speaker disagrees with someone. The sentence suggests that other people believe or may believe that NPR's repurposing was
just a simple act, and it was the
only thing NPR did. In other words, others may think that NPR did not do anything else beyond that simple act, and/or the repurposing had no further implications beyond the simple act of repurposing. The speaker of your sentence in essence says that is not true -- it is contrary to fact.
Others may not agree with my "subjunctive" ideas here, but that's how I might look at these examples.