The three registers of sense: found, constructed, projected

When you read a connection between words, the connection can be true in different ways — or false in one. Endolinguistics keeps three registers apart, and most confusion about the method comes from mixing them.

Found. The relation is already there in the language, realized in existing words across a family. You didn’t make it; you noticed it. This is the register the method is built to reach.
Constructed. The relation is a deliberate model — a hypothesis you build to see what it organizes. It isn’t claiming to be a fact yet; it’s a tool, honestly labelled as one.
Projected. The relation is something you wanted to see, read into the words from the outside. This is the only register that is an error — and the one that gives pattern-hunting a bad name.

The whole discipline of the method is keeping these straight: presenting a found pattern as found, a constructed one as a model, and catching a projected one before it dresses up as either.

None of this asks you to feel fewer connections. It asks you to say, each time, which register am I in? — and to flag an interpretation as an interpretation. Do that, and even your mistakes become useful. Skip it, and even your discoveries become suspect.