  We have proposed in a companion paper (Considere et al. 2000) that bars
appeared recently in massive starburst nucleus galaxies. We now test this
hypothesis on an extended sample of barred and unbarred Markarian starburst
galaxies, using several samples of normal galaxies as control samples.
  In support of this hypothesis, we show that the proportion of barred galaxies
is much lower in Markarian starburst galaxies than in normal galaxies. In
addition to this deficiency of bars, we find that Markarian starburst galaxies
have smaller disks than normal galaxies, and that the disks of unbarred
starburst galaxies are smaller, on average, than barred ones. Finally, we show
that the Markarian starburst galaxies do not seem to follow the local
Tully--Fisher relation.
  Various alternatives are examined to explain the deficiency of bars and the
small disk dimensions in Markarian starburst galaxies. One possibility, which
is in agreement with the young bar hypothesis, is that the formation of disks
happens after the formation of bulges and that bars appear only later, when
enough gas has been accreted in the disk.
