Event detection is a key task in order to access informa- tion through content. This paper focuses on events realized by deverbal nouns in Italian. Deverbal nouns obtained through transpositional suf- fixes (such as -zione; -mento, -tura and -aggio) are commonly known as nouns of action, i.e. nouns which denote the process/action described by the corresponding verbs. However, this class of nouns is also known for a specific polysemous alternation: they may denote the result of the process/action of the corresponding verb. This paper describes a sta- tistically based analysis that helps to develop a classifier for automatic identification of deverbal nouns denoting events in context by exploit- ing rules obtained from syntagmatic and collocational cues identified by linguists.