A scarcity of salt can threaten the very life of a community, a fact

"Some of the very lives within a community" is a bit sketchy.

In this context, "the very" means something along the lines of "the actual." So, the expression "the very life" makes sense, because it conveys "the actual life." In the version created via the use of (A), "the very" emphasizes the fact that a scarcity of salt can threaten the life of a community. It says that a scarcity of salt can threaten the actual life of the community.

The expression "some of the very lives" therefore is somewhat the same as "some of the actual lives." However, since the translation from "very" to "actual" is not exact, and since "very" is more just used for emphasis, rather than as a normal adjective, there is not really such a thing as a "very life." Nobody says, "The people in Smithtown lead very lives." So we wouldn't say "some very lives," and so, while we could argue that "some of the very lives" is somewhat logical, somehow that expression doesn't quite make sense.


In addition to the "some of the very" issue described above, this version conveys an unclear meaning. Does "very lives" refer to the lives of people within a community? Does it imply that a community itself has multiple lives, as a cat supposedly does? What exactly does this version convey?

By the way, the idea that there is some "intended meaning" of a sentence in a Sentence Correction question and that a version that "changes the meaning" is therefore incorrect is a misconception. A version that effectively conveys any meaning that makes sense is correct. End of story.

Overall, to perform at a high level in Sentence Correction, you have to go well beyond looking for rule infractions. For example, to see why the version created via the use of (E) is incorrect, you have to analyze the sentence holistically and see why it's illogical in multiple ways unique to that particular sentence.