By considering a family of orthogonal polynomials generalizing the Tchebycheff polynomials of the second kind we refine the corresponding results of De Sainte-Catherine and Viennot on Tchebycheff polynomials of the second kind (Lecture Notes in Mathematics, vol. 1171, 1985, Springer-Verlag, 120). (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.