The crucial influence of the Illyrian movement on the linguistic shift towards the Štokavian dialect in northwestern Croatia is a generally accepted fact in Croatian linguistics. In the nineteenth century, Croatian linguistic history encountered the Illyrian movement during the first national Croatian language planning process, and the significance of Vjekoslav Babukić to the shaping of the linguistic policy of the first years of the Illyrian movement has been affirmed in numerous works of scientific research. Babukić’s work was spatially tied to northwestern Croatia, where the Croatian Kajkavian literary language was in use (along with German, Hungarian, and the official Latin), featuring high linguistic and orthographic norms spontaneously generated through centuries of literary tradition. The Croatian Kajkavian literary language was open to the dialectal influence from all parts of Croatia, a tradition visible in Kajkavian dictionaries and unquestionably confirmed in Kajkavian grammars. Although the Illyrian movement chose to build upon Štokavian linguistic foundations, Babukić himself on many occasions pointed out the need to respect existing linguistic traditions. This paper will isolate linguistic indicators characteristic of the Croatian Kajkavian literary language on the basis of a phonological, morphonological and syntactic analysis of Babukić’s texts in order to confirm the level to which the Kajkavian literary tradition influenced his language and style and to what level this linguistic tradition is reflected in the early explicit Illyrian linguistic norms presided over by Babukić.