How do you define a basic built-in parameter, I don't know what you mean by that?
As far as I can tell there is no way of associating instance built-in parameters with the categories they serve. A parameter may also be associated with multiple categories (such as 'comments' and 'Mark' (which is also known as door number in door instances)).
Your approach of creating instances and extracting parameters is likely the only way of getting this information. Not sure every type of element can be created with the API however.
Note also:
ParameterFilterUtilities.IsParameterApplicable
This may be of use for checking against elements but will not only be for instances i.e. when you use ElementParameterFilter it checks instance then type of that instance. So this utility method associated with that workflow probably doesn't distinguish between instance and type either.
