In this paper we compute the number of reduced decompositions of certain permutations sigma is an element of S-n as a product of transpositions (1, 2), (1, 3), ..., (1, n). We present several combinatorial correspondences between these decompositions and combinatorial objects such as Catalan paths and k-ary trees. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.