From notes on ealier versions of the specification:

There is a clear and natural association between many types and their corresponding elements. For example, the type declaration for C<T extends I> defines a family of declared types, and its type parameter <T extends I> defines the type variable named T. For other types, though, it is less clear what this method will return. This must be more fully specified. For instance, what element is returned for a primitive type, an array, an intersection type that forms the bound of a type variable, or a type variable implicitly defined by the capture conversion of a wildcard?